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RITUALISM DETHRONED 



AXD THE 



True Church Found 



OR, 



THE DIVINE LIFE IN ALL THE CHRISTIAN AGES MOST REVEALED IN 
THOSE CHURCHES AND "MARTYRS Of JESCS " 

THAT HAVE WITNESSED AGAINST A 

CEREMONIAL AND SACRAMENTAL LAW. 

(A PLEA FOR CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, CHRISTIAN UNION, AND THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN LIFE.) 



BY 

REV. WILLIAM B. ORVIS, 

Author of "Christ Coming in His Kingdom;" formerly Editor of "People's 
Preacher and Christian Era;" "Western Independent," etc. 



"Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances, which was against us." 

" How shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? " 

"For we, being many, are one bread and one body." 

" One Lord, one faith, one baptism . . . even as ye are called in one hope of your 
calling." 

"The flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and 
they are life." 



3 & 



PHILADELPHIA : 

HENRY LONGSTRETH, 

738 Sansom Street. 

1875. 



• ©7 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

REV. WILLIAM B. ORVIS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington, D. C. 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



LC Control Number 



tmp96 027862 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAQE 

PKELIMINAKY— The Outlook 5 

I.— Conceded and Determinate Principles 17 

II.— Origin and Import of Baptism 54 

III.— What is Christian Baptism? 99 

IV.— Gleams of the Conflict between Ritualism 

and non-Ritualism 126 

Confusion of the Ritualists 126 

Y. — Chronicles of the non-Baptizers 167 

Justin Martyr 167 

Gnostic Protest against the Incoming Papacy 172 

Mosheim Criticised 176 

Mosheim on Influx of Ritualism 179 

Manes (or Mani) and the Oriental School 180 

Early Gentile Churches 184 

The Priscillianists 200 

The Euchites, or Praying- Ones 207 

The Paulicians 214 

The Orleanists 217 

The Arranians 219 

The Gerhardites 221 

The Leuthardites— Arnoldites 223 

The Catharists 225 

YI.— Chronicles of the non-Baptizers {Continued). 228 

The Mystics 228 

Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit 229 

The Friends of God 230 

Tauler the Preacher of the Higher Christian Life 231 

Tauler's Religion Unselfish and Unceremonial 233 

The Petro-Brussians, Scourgers, etc 237 

The Waldenses and Albigenses 238 

During 600 years all Protestants rejected Water-Baptism.... 239 
The Publicani or English Waldenses 244 



4 CONTENTS. 

CHAP. 

VI. — ( Continued. ) page 

The Lollards 246 

The Oxford Reformers 248 

The United Brethren 253 

The Reformers— Luther, Carlstadt, etc 258 

(Their discussions respecting Sacraments.) 

Society of Friends 272 

Cromwell and the Independents aided the Friends in 

maintaining Religious Freedom 283 

The Highest Type of Religious Life with the Non-Sacra- 

mentarians 287 

Friends special witnesses for the Higher Christian Life 288 

The Spiritual Christians of Russia 290 

Christian Unionists of America 292 

VII.— The Eucharist— Agap.^— Lord's Supper— Feast 
or Charity (Love Feast)— Pascha (Pass- 
over)— Easter— Mass 293 

Is the Lord's Supper a Sacrament? 293 

ADDENDA.— Correlated Miscellany i-xxvi 



PRELIMINARY-THE OUTLOOK. 



THIS work is written in the hope that it may aid in lessen- 
ing the too frequent and too manifest idolatrous attach- 
ments to rituals, and in the re-enthronement of Christ as the 
Saxctifier of His Church, and the Light and Life of the 
"world. 

It is written specially in the hope that a day will dawn 
when the pretentious claims of a Ceremonial Law will 
cease, and the long-enduring custom of building sects upon 
conformities or non-conformities in orders and rites will have 
come to an end. That the* Millennial peace and glory of Zion 
will not be marred by rivalries and contentions about baptisms 
and other external rites and ceremonies of the churches, is the 
inmost conviction of nearly all who love Christ and desire the 
complete triumph of His cause. That " ordinances," so-called, 
will not hold as high a place in the esteem of Christ's spiri- 
tual flock as they do now, is the concession of many who in- 
sist that they are now filling, by divine appointment, a need- 
ful place in the economy of the Church. They concede that 
when that which is perfect is come, that which is but symbolic, 
and not intrinsic, or essentially life-giving, may pass away. 

The writer's early education was in the Baptist Church. 
He was inducted thereinto by immersion, in the spring sea- 
son of 1837, in Franklin county, New York. A year later, 
while at Oberlin, Ohio, the writer is fully conscious that for 
the first time God opened his eyes to see that he had never 
" passed from death unto life " spiritually, and being equally 
sure that in June of 1838 the spiritual sight was given, and 
a newness of life in Christ, and a spiritual baptism all un- 

5 



6 PRELIMINARY. 

known before, the query at once arose : " Am I baptized 
with believers' baptism in accordance with the Baptist 
faith?" 

I answered No. Yet having the soul made alive, and " illu- 
mined " by the Holy Spirit ; and realizing the unearthly and un- 
utterable joy and glory of Christ, revealed within, I shuddered 
at the thought of again stooping to the cold watery element, 
as though I must needs be in bondage thereto in order to 
stand accepted in Christ, who had already accepted me, as 
the Holy Spirit witnessed with my spirit, in a manner all un- 
thought and unhoped for before ; causing me to adore and 
wonder at that " matchless grace," which wonder of redeem- 
ing love, I believed, though unrecognized by sects on earth, 
would be an amazement in heaven forever. Nearly two years 
later I saw in an argument for the union of all the saints (as 
an obstacle to which, every one knows, that water baptism 
stands pre-eminent), the suggestion that Paul's " one baptism " 
(Eph. iv. 5) must be the baptism of the Spirit, else we have 
two baptisms, viz. : that of water, and also that of the Spirit, 
since the essential baptism of the Spirit, certainly, must not 
be given up. This was a seed-thought ; and falling upon 
my heart, already prepared by the querying about my Mas- 
ter's will, and the Spirit's teaching before alluded to, it has 
taken root and grown into the tree exhibited in this volume, 
and in convictions more intense than I dare hope to impress 
upon others. 

The writer had, ere this, however, found a fold consonant 
with his enlarged views and Christian sympathies, in the 
church at Oberlin, which stood for twenty-one years as the 
embodiment of the " unity of the saints," no other church 
having been planted there in that period. And many there 
were that, during this time, came from the East, and the West, 
and the North, and the South, of Congregationalists, and 
Methodists, and Presbyterians, and Baptists, and Churchmen, 
imd Quakers, and sat down in their " one fold," under their 
" one (earthly) shepherd," Prof. Finney, their beloved pastor 



PRELIMINARY. 7 

(whom God hath honored in the calling of many thousands 
into his kingdom), and enlisted with them in work for Christ. 
And through all this thrice septennary of years, no discourse 
was preached from that pulpit to show that any Christian 
believer should attach himself to this or that denomination 
rather than another, but a constant preaching of Christ, and 
a full salvation for all through Him. 

Moreover, the writer, in a conversation with Prof. Finney, 
proposed the question : " Should a member of the Society 
of Friends, recognising the importance of church organization 
and labor, as they do, yet objecting to water baptism, ask to 
be admitted to your church, i. <?., that of which you are pas- 
tor, would you receive him without the baptism ? " Prof. 
Finney promptly replied, " I without hesitation answer Yes." 

And when before a Congregational Council, at Lenox, in 
Northern Ohio, for ordination, some years later, although the 
writer frankly stated that he recognized no New Testament 
" ordinances " to be binding as a ritual law, these having been 
" blotted out " by the cross of Christ, it was made no bar to 
his receiving ordination, and he has never known of its being 
a bar to his work, as a minister of Christ in the church of his 
choice. He (like Paul in circumcising Timothy) places all 
rituals upon the basis of mere church authority and expedi- 
ency ; and is willing to accord to each church, the Baptist and 
the Friends, equally and alike, the right to order its externals in 
accordance with its best wisdom, and conscientious convictions 
of law and right. If, however, any church adopts a regime 
which seems to freeze its charity, or mar its loveliness, and is 
designed to impeach all others, who may be equally acceptable 
in God's sight, and thus the peace, unity and beauty of Zion is 
marred, those thus " set at nought " by their brethren may 
protest, and in the Spirit of Jesus endeavor both by precept 
and example to " show a more excellent way." 

That the hitherto unending controversy respecting " ordi- 
nances " and sacraments has been an unqualified disgrace to 
the Christian Church, both in the inception of the ritualistic 



b PRELIMINARY. 

ideas, and in their extension in the later centuries, it would 
be impossible to deny. And the manner in which all counter 
querying has been excluded, and even the knowledge of the 
non-ritualistic churches and their testimony, both in the past 
and present, has been suppressed or prevented, is far from an 
honorable and candid exhibit of the historic records. Ex- 
cepting Neander (a converted Jew) the popular Church his- 
torians have only traced church history in the ritualistic lines, 
and Neander has obliviated much of the non-ritualistic his- 
tory in the two generations immediately succeeding the apos- 
tles, or, at least, only taught it by inference, as our record will 
show. 

What historian has given a full and frank history of that 
Spiritual Church of Christ, in which God has manifestly 
dwelt, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost has been its char- 
acteristic feature and outline? — where the higher life of 
faith, love, and consecration to Christ, death to sin, and the 
endurance of persecutions for Christ's sake, have been con- 
stantly exhibited ? Had this unwritten history been written 
it would have eclipsed their water-baptisms by a better bap- 
tism, and would have shown how the church that has walked 
in the Spirit, and has been taught of God, has understood the 
Master's teachings, and their mission to the nations. It would 
have ever thrown (during the earlier ages) the supreme honor 
upon the non-baptizers and non-ritualists, upon whom, it would 
be seen, God has so continually set his seal of approbation by 
clothing them with holiness as a robe, and enduing them 
with power from on high. Had the complete history been 
written it would have been seen that ritualists and baptizers 
have full oft unchurched Christ himself, and that they have 
very extensively dethroned Christ as an atoning sacrifice and 
Saviour, through their widely prevalent doctrine of baptismal 
regeneration. They have unchurched Christ by making 
water-baptism a door into their folds, thus rejecting very 
many with whom Christ has manifestly dwelt, because they 
rejected the baptism of water. Thus their churches have 



PRELIMINARY. 9 

been folds, not for Christians simply, but for baptized Christ- 
ians, or baptized professors of Christ, which is quite another 
thing than a fold for Christians because they are such. 

These ritualists have been as carnal in their interpretation 
of the words of Christ : " Go ye, therefore, and teach all 
nations, baptizing them," etc., as the Jews were in interpret- 
ing Christ's proposal to give " His flesh for the life of the 
world," or, the disciples in understanding the " leaven of the 
Pharisees," or, the " meat which Christ ate, which they knew 
not of." And it is doubtful whether, with the amount of 
"tares" that have grown from the use of the external (Jew- 
ish) baptism, the good that is derived from its use, even ap- 
proximately, compensates for the loss of moral and spiritual 
power thereby occasioned, and is continued to this day. It 
has, moreover, been hidden from later ages, that the fathers 
of the Christian Church seldom referred to Christ, as authority 
for their ritualistic baptism, when they practised it ; and 
perhaps never used the formula found in Matt, xxviii. 19, but 
connected the practice of baptism with the Jewish idea of a 
priesthood, "laver," the anointing oil, etc., and many of them, 
w T ith the continuance of circumcision itself, which latter was 
not considered complete until the purification from blood had 
cleansed the circumcised individual. It has too often been 
hidden, also, in later centuries, that the Christian worshippers 
of the early centuries never thought of the eucharistic supper 
but, either as a " feast of love," or " charity," or as the con- 
tinuance of the Paseha, or Jewish Passover, with a remem- 
brance of Christ superadded. The Christian Church at first 
grew out of the Jewish, and its baptisms and Passover Avere 
by many engrafted upon the Christian Church. The unut- 
terable retinue of mummeries and vagaries connected with 
baptism and other rites, as seen in all lapsed and apostate 
churches, and in some not so far lapsed, has never been 
shown to be other than the natural out-growth of an exotic, 
yet assumed indigenous ritual law, blinding the eyes of those 
who might have been true worshippers, to what God accepts 
as true worship. 



10 PHELIMIXAEY. 

If it has required a thousand volumes, and all the Papal 
and Sacramentarian teachers of the past, to define and guide 
to the right observance of ritual baptism and the eucharist, 
and enforce their claims, may it not require one volume, of 
the size here exhibited, to expose the assumptions and false 
reasonings of their votaries, to unravel the confused net-work 
in which they appear to be snared ; and to extricate them 
from the meshes in which, for centuries, they have seemed to 
be hopelessly plunged ? Let it not seem strange that it requires 
the piling of demonstration upon demonstration, like the 
heaving of Pelion upon Ossa, in mountain height, just to lift 
the eye of the sectarist and ritualist above the smoke- 
clouds of the contest, and the dense fogs that seem to envelop 
them relative to this subject. Yet, as Bayliss says, " Little by 
little the smoke of the long strife is disappearing, and we may 
hope that erewhile the royal form of eternal and universal 
truth shall be revealed, and all these hitherto contending hosts 
shall unite in its coronation ; even now, through the rifts of 
the smoke, we get an occasional glimpse of the monarch." 
May he soon stand fully revealed in the sunlight of God's 
glory, the true exaltation of Christ as Redeemer, and the 
illumination of the Holy Ghost. To enkindle hope of this 
result, be it remembered that truth has many allies ; that 
every conflict between two errorists affords some vantage 
ground for the truth-seeker to stand upon, perhaps all unseen 
before, and furnishes so much ammunition and artillery # for 
truth's advance upon the strongholds of either error, that any 
one, finding the truth, having followed the gleamings of 
light seen through the spray, may use it in error's final over- 
throw. Thus have we taken the ritualistic assaults and 
defences as they tilt the one against the other, and thus learn- 
ing their weak and defenceless positions, we are enabled oft to 
condemn them out of their own mouths, as well as out of the 
Word of Inspiration. We have not confined our analytic 
crucible to the teachings of merely (so-called) High Church 
ritualists (that we leave to another occasion and another 



PRELIMINARY. 11 

sphere) ; in this work we strike deeper, and take into view 
the more pervasive forms of ritualism, as entrenched under 
the pretentious name of sacraments; and have traced this 
record of ritualism and non-ritualism, through collateral 
periods of history ; endeavoring to set forth as clearly as prac- 
ticable the differing points evolved by each. While we admit 
that ritualists have oft taught much religious truth, and that 
the ritualistic churches have been marked by various shades 
and degrees of superstitious attachment to rites and sacra- 
ments, and that the dissidents from the Papal ritualism did 
not always attain full-orbed views of the Christian system, 
and the fulness of the divine life in Christ ; yet we have ever 
found that the church, in proportion as it was ritualistic, has 
lost sight of Christ, and a full salvation through Him ; and in 
proportion as it was non-ritualistic, has it sought to honor 
Christ, and attain this full salvation in Him. That some of 
the non-ritualists may have unduly disparaged the institutes 
of Moses, as compared with the Gospels, and the clearer and 
more spiritual light of the New Testament, we will not deny ; 
but generally, they were pre-eminent in their attachment to 
the Scriptures, and in their zeal for their spread among men ; 
and all, holding that Christ was divine, by the union of the 
divine and human nature in one, though differing as to the 
time when this incomprehensible union took place, they ever 
deemed Jesus the Christ, a Divine Redeemer and Saviour, 
through the blood of atonement and sacrifice ; and thus have 
ever put to the blush those who have virtually and undenia- 
bly taken Christ's work from Him by attributing a saving 
power to sacraments administered by the puny agency of 
man. Thus have the non-ritualists ever maintained, in the 
main, that faith and love, and obedience to the moral law, which 
all admit to be essential Christian characteristics, while nearly 
all the jars, and schisms, and apostasies have manifestly 
grown out of an undue attachment to sacraments and rituals 
which are certainly non-saving ; yet have bewitched the nomi- 
nal church just in proportion as it has departed from Christ. 



12 PRELIMINARY. 

Ill the chapter, devoted to the analytical dissecting of the 
ritualistic teachers, we have found them very successfully an- 
nihilating each other, and oft, as conclusively annihilating 
their own scheme, by their utter inconsistency of premises 
and conclusion, as when Dr. Wall, having searched all ante- 
Christian and later history to pro\ e his theory of infant-bap- 
tism as belonging by right to the birthright members of 
Christian households, yet virtually denies the historic fact of 
its later application to the birthright members of the Jewish 
Church ! 

This work is issued at an era when most Protestant churches 
find themselves in the practice of certain rites and ceremo- 
nies called " ordinances" and assuming the authority there- 
for to be " from heaven," they essay to bind them upon all 
Christians even to the end ; (albeit, there is no approach to 
an end of the debates among themselves respecting the cir- 
cumstantials thereof;) yet, as stated, an inquiry respecting 
their origin and authority is frowned upon, and the worth- 
less questions of how, when, and where, have been almost the 
only queries allowed respecting them. 

On these frivolous questions sects shoot off from sects, each 
rearing a new banner for the defence of its interpretation of 
a ritual law, and not for an illustration of the sanctifying 
power of the Gospel, and that life of holiness which the bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost secures ; nor for recovering the tar- 
nished honor of Christ, thus set at nought by a false trust in 
a ritual ; nor for a more consistent and perfect manifestation 
of unrestricted Christian love. It has seemed to escape the 
notice of these champions of sacraments and rites, that no 
superior holiness or moral virtue, or moral heroism, has been 
attained by themselves or their followers ; yet have they not 
ceased to seek the final entl Tenement of their sacramenta- 
rian idol among men, and to be willing to count as dross, and 
throw away the baptism of the Spirit, and all its fulness of 
spiritual life for man, only to retain their cold and lifeless 
form of baptizing with water. Meanwhile, the customs of re- 



PRELIMINARY. lo 

ligious people in the observance of "ordinances" have been as 
variable as the wind and tide, and as various as the ever- 
coming retinue of sects. 

We have long been pressed with the conviction, that our 
ritualistic historians had largely ignored the anti-ritualistic 
record, or defaced it with unwarrantable charges of heresy ; 
just as in our day, they have sometimes ignored in their 
Evangelical Alliances, or otherwise misrepresented, the Society 
of Friends; and our record will clearly show that we were 
not mistaken in our surmise. Indeed, the most grateful part 
of our work has been, in searching out and vindicating by 
unquestionable testimony the record of early and later anti- 
ritualists. We have assuredly found these, in all the ages, 
the light and life of the church and the world ; and without 
their light the true church could scarcely have been found at 
all in some of the early and middle ages. 

If the long-enduring sacramental customs of the church 
(parts of it) be adduced to sanction such customs, we have 
adduced as long-enduring anti-sacramentarian customs of the 
most spiritual portion of the church, to countervail it. Nor 
does long-enduring tradition or custom prove a law. The 
Jews have for three thousand years looked for a Messiah yet to 
come ; is He, therefore, yet to come f 

We would that our own reading in the searcli of the early 
records could have been as extensive as that of a Neander, or 
a Dale, whose records we have freely used, however, and that 
with the personal consent of the latter, seen face to face ; and 
w r e may say, that the later and very extensive researches of 
the latter have still more confirmed the positions and conclu- 
sions we had before reached. 

Would any one suggest, that it betokens undue confidence 
in the writer to hope to sustain his positions in the face of a 
ritualistic Christendom, he answers, it is God himself that 
commands, "Let there be eight !" and the writer has but 
done his duty in writing as he has. With God alone he leaves 
all the consequences, either to the writer, or to the church that 



14 PRELIMINARY. 

Christ has purchased with a great price ; or to a hungering 1 
and thirsting world of immortal beings, needing something 
more satisfying and heavenly than the empty and hollow rites 
that occupy so much of the attention of bewildered millions. 

Remember that sacraments are no more holy than their par- 
ticipants are; the term "holy" is altogether misplaced when 
given to the ceremony. And these ceremonies are as really 
open to inquiry as the customs of the Jews were, or of tht 
present celibate clergy of Rome, or the non-celibate clergy of 
Russia or of England, or of any other land. 

God himself is not so holy, but he delights in being more 
perfectly known. 

The writer questions not any church's abstract right to an 
avowed church custom ; he has a right to question, and does 
question, their propriety in certain cases, but more especially 
their claim when they arrogate the sanction of Divine au- 
thority. 

He would not loosen the organic bonds of any fold, pro- 
vided Christ be received and not rejected therefrom ; and he 
has observed that the Pedobaptist and the Quaker, who both 
teach birthright membership in their folds, have each a 
strong hold on the birthright members; the latter, however, 
more potent for good, perhaps, than the former ; so that it is 
not in the baptism that the moral strength abides. 

And the writer having been one of them, is fully aware 
that the Baptist church will sooner accept his position of no 
law for baptism, or for church union through baptism, than 
assent to the claim that aught else than immersion in water 
is ritual baptism. Those who ask Baptists to forego their de- 
mand for immersion, simply ask them to forego baptism 
entirely, and we only ask of other denominations the same 
that they ask of the Baptists. 

Any impeachment of the writer's motives will fall harm- 
less at his feet, since God alone is the Supreme Judge, and he 
is willing to refer the motive to His tribunal; and realizing 
already, the ineffable melody as of a "harp" from heaven in 



PRELIMINARY. 15 

his soul, as he presses on in the preparation of the work, poor 
would be the exchange for the favor of any sect or body of 
Christians, or even of all united in one. He only asks that 
his record and proofs be read with candor and kindness, the 
same that he has ever attempted to exercise toward all in the 
preparation of the work. 

It has been deemed best to give conceded and determinate 
principles, the first place in our plan. The origin and various 
uses of the term the second place. Then the correction of 
very general false impressions relative thereto, by setting forth 
the true Christian baptism. Succeeding this, will follow the 
historical outline of the conflict between the Pauline and 
Judaic, or ritualistic and non-ritualistic tendencies in the early 
Christian ages. The argument adverse to sacramentarian and 
ritualistic claims to be continued by continuing the record of 
the long line of non-ritualists and non-sacramentarians, which 
record extends through all the Christian ages to the present 
time : to close with chapters presenting such refutation of 
sacramentarian claims, and such testimonies as the most spir- 
itual and eminent Christians have penned from time to time. 
Being ever ready to correct a mistaken record on any point 
of fact or doctrine, and, also, ready to answer for any of the 
positions here taken, the writer submits the work, the result 
of inquiries pushed through at least one-third of a century, to 
a public that needs not the " forms of godliness," but the 
power thereof; not a " name to live" through mere external 
conformities, but the heaven-bestowed blessing of eternal 

SALVATION. 



RITUALISM DETHRONED, 



TRUE CHURCH FOUND, 



CHAPTER I. 
CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 

God accepts not the Form. 

GOD never accepted any man for his appearance, his liturgy, 
or his ritual observance. 

The kingdom of God never consisted in " meats and drinks," 
or " divers baptisms," but in " righteousness, peace and joy in 
the Holy Ghost." 

Lip service, and forms of religious worship, have ever been 
of small account in the divine economy. 

Yet, on no subject has the Christian Church, in many of 
its divisions, been more bewildered than on this. 

These have thought that God has given some sacred func- 
tion to the ceremony, and is very jealous for its mainte- 
nance — and touching this, they manifest much zeal for God, but 
it is questionable whether it be " according to knowledge." 

In some portions of Christendom, ritualism and ecclesiasti- 
cism are overshadowing the professed Christian Church to an 
extent that might well cause solicitude on the part of all who 
wait to see the kingdom of God come, not in word only, but 
in power, and who are assured that it is essentially a spiritual 
kingdom, and not a form of external worship. 

2 17 



18 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Christianity adapted to Universal Acceptance, and 
to the Unification of All. 

Christianity, as a system, is one of ethics, and has in it 
nothing provincial, nothing schismatic, nothing merely tem- 
porary, or local ; but is the transcendent and universal reli- 
gion. It is God's moral legation, sent alike to all nations, 
and destined to pervade all nations, and, therefore, adapted 
alike to all. Its laws and principles are as apposite and ap- 
propriate in the torrid as in the frigid zones — on the bleak 
mountains of Greenland, as by the crystal fountains and 
lakes of Palestine — in the waterless deserts of Africa, as on 
the shores of the Jordan or the sea of Galilee. Everywhere, 
in all climates, circumstances, or conditions of men, in sick- 
ness or in health, in vigor or in infirmity, to the Jew and 
to the Gentile, Christianity is from the beginning and forever 
the same. It requires nothing that cannot in all this variety 
of circumstances be equally rendered by each and all. And 
this, because its whole law is fulfilled in this one word, LOVE. 

In its genius and design, it differs from all other reli- 
gions — since all others are distinguished by their rituals — and 
their rituals may be said to inhere in the systems, so that the 
rituals are but the exponents of the systems. "Such was Judaism, 
Magianism, Mahometanism, Paganism, — and such the Papacy 
of to-day. 

But Christianity is as full-orbed and complete without a 
ritual as with it ; the same to the slave as to the freeman — 
to the Puritan, enjoying in full his dear-bought religious 
heritage, as to the prisoner in his cell — to the exile, banished 
and precluded from all human society, as to the punctilious 
worshipper at some thronged and frequented fane. It mat- 
ters not of what age, race, color, or clime; of what philoso- 
phy, school, or sect. Christianity knows none of these distinc- 
tions. Like an ocean tide overflowing pools, it wipes them all 
out; knowing no external lines of demarcation, no bounda- 
ries even of dogma or creed, or characteristic, save such as 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 19 

necessarily evince an inward purity of heart; for its bounda- 
ries (like the unseen land) are all internal and not external ; 
its identification is the spirit of man sivayed by the law of love! 

Christianity, the love that sent Christ to do and suffer for 
man, was born in heaven, before ever the " world was," or 
the nations had a name or a place, or any mode of "worship- 
ping the Father," "of whom are all things;" and was the 
same in essence before Abraham or Moses, or a ritual law 
was known — as it has been since a ritual law has passed away. 
The same hi essence to those apostles that preached and prac- 
tised Judaism, as to the Apostle Paul, the apostle of the 
Gentiles, that did not preach nor practise Judaism. The same 
to the early non-ritualistic Christians, as to those half-blinded 
by the later apostatizing ritualism of the Papacy ; the same 
to those who possessed its spirit in the dark middle ages, as 
in the future millennial glory of Zion ; the same in the past 
and future of the Church on earth, as in the eternal light and 
harmony of heaven. Love, the same everywhere, and in all 
ages, and all worlds, is the ultimate of Christianity, and is 
the fulfilling of the law. 

The Infinite Father looks with equal eye upon all modes 
of sincere approach to Him, that are in harmony with equal 
love and good-will to man ! He beholds with equal eye each 
of the diverse sects that truly " know His name," Himself 
knowing none of them by the names men have given them, 
but simply by the registry of heaven, as engraved on the 
tablet of His infinite heart of love! He concerns not Him- 
self with human disputes about modes of worship, forms 
of church organization, or ritual observances ; He is as 
high above these as heaven is above the earth, or God's 
thoughts above man's. He is only solicitous that the true 
spirit of penitence, love and worship be found, and 
Pie is as well pleased with the one worshipper as the 
other. He wills that the individual members of all folds 
should walk in w T isdom toward them that are without; in 
love and harmony with all that are within, and in sanctified 



20 HITUALISM DETHRONED. 

fellowship one with another. The hist:iy of the Church 
shows that He has never marked any distinctive fold as the 
exclusive recipient of His favor ; He has in turn prospered 
thera all, as their purity or steadfastness in the saving faith 
would permit; and all alike have been made participants of 
many of the richest blessings of His grace. Thus has He 
sealed with His own signet, Gentile and Jew, Waldensian and 
Catharist, Reformed Episcopalian and Reformed Covenanter, 
the Independent and the Presbyterian, the Baptist, Methodist 
and Quaker, the Evangelical Lutheran, and the Moravian, 
each and all, and ten thousand times ten thousand more, who 
have received His forgiving smile and benediction ; and their 
work has been crowned with distinguishing; marks of the Divine 
favor. Oft have they been honored with unusual success in 
turning men from sin to holiness ; and which of them in turn 
has not at intervals shown incipient marks of backsliding, 
spiritual imbecility and threatened decay? 

But this Divine impartiality evinces that it is the spiritual 
and holy Church, the Christ-like individual, that God ac- 
cepts, whatever be their creed, their liturgy, their ceremonial 
observance, or non-observance of ceremony, or their manner 
of worshipping the God of truth, love, and holiness. Hence 
we see that Christianity positively appertains to the 
internal, the heart-worship, and not to the external. This 
that is internal is all that therein can be positive, unceasing 
and invariable. Christianity is, and must be, in the nature 
of things, a spiritual religion. Its seat and subject is the 
inner man! It is not " in the letter," but "in the spirit." 
Nothing outward or extrinsic strictly belongs to it. Its pre- 
cepts and commands, each and all, inculcate principles, or 
the spread of principles to the heart-renovation, or spiritual 
regeneration of man. Whatever is an attribute or element 
of benevolence is an element of Christianity, and naught else 
is or can be. The moral law and the Christian law are sim- 
ply synonymous terms. That law is co-eternal with God, and 
as universal as the universe ; Jesus Christ was its embodiment, 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 21 

the teacher, the exemplifier of this universal law. Contingent, 
local, temporary, or circumstantial laws may grow out of, and 
be the demand of this universal law in its specific application ; 
but be it remembered that all these are circumstantial and con- 
tingent, and not inherent in Christianity, nor commensurate 
with it, and have no other binding force than the circumstances 
which created theirnecessity. The circumstances of God's people 
in Palestine once demanded a Ceremonial Law, and that law 
was instituted, and inhered in a system we now term Judaism; 
but Christianity knows no such ceremonial law, no more 
than it knows the ceremonies of pagan worship which were 
cotemporary with Judaism. Christ, the Teacher and Re- 
deemer of all, broke down all these ceremonial walls of 
partition. 

The Genius of Christianity opposed to a Ceremonial 

Law. 

Its genius of universal adaptability forbids its being encum- 
bered with such a law. Its catholicity and demand for unity 
forbid its being jeopardized by such a law. It is not sup- 
posable or admissible that its All-seeing Founder would con- 
sent to jeopardize its unity or catholicity by such a law. The 
Judaic ritual was designed to be restrictive and local in its 
application. Its ceremonial was peculiar to one people, and 
was required of none but the lineage of Abraham. It was 
appointed for the purpose of distinguishing one nation from 
all others. It was, therefore, provincial in its design. The 
design of Christianity is directly the opposite of this, viz. : to 
unify all nations. Christianity neither can be known by any 
external and arbitrary sign, nor does it allow of the attempt to 
be thus known. It does not define, and how preposterous to 
assert that it appoints a ritual ! True, Christianity requires 
wisdom in the use of means and measures, because wisdom is 
an attribute and manifestation of benevolence ; but the meas- 
ures themselves are not such attributes, nor necessarilv the 
exponents of benevolence. Good-will is the only law, all else 



22 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

must remain contingent. 'Yet reason affirms that the law of 
love requires the use of every appropriate means to secure the 
great ends of benevolence, without placing the benevolent 
actor under bondage to any of them. The example of Jesus 
Christ and his apostles, who used in freedom all customary 
methods, and yet in the end held themselves in bondage to 
none, substantiates this inference. No mode or measure cas- 
ually adapted to secure the great objects of benevolence, can 
be erected into a positive institution, an unreraissible and un- 
ceasing ordinance, as this would externalize the Christian 
system, causing it to resemble permanently the temporary and 
local system of Judaism, or the Papacy. It would destroy at 
once its distinctive features of spirituality, universality, catho- 
licity, and intrinsic excellence and perfection. Christianity 
calls, regenerates, sanctifies, and saves men as individuals by 
their own faith, and not by any intervention of a human absolu- 
tion, or administration of rites. A full obedience to its claims 
is rendered when the attributes of benevolence are possessed 
and manifested, without any submission to a ceremonial law. 
That which secures the heavenly mind, and prepares the soul 
for the heaven to come, is all that is obligatory upon the 
Christian believer here. Every well-informed writer upon 
the evidences of regeneration, and the Christian graces, will 
very correctly delineate the genuine attributes and manifesta- 
tions of benevolence. They are very distinctly drawn out in 
Christ's Sermon on the Mount; in 1 Cor. xiii.; in Gal. vi.; also 
in modern uninspired treatises, such as " Edwards on the 
Gracious Affections," "Alleine on True Conversion," and 
"Finney on Regeneration," and on " Sanctification." The 
latter writer specifies some forty or more of the attributes, 
as Love, Mercy, Faith, Patience, Purity, Zeal, etc., all of 
which undeniably inhere in the spirit of benevolence, or 
Christian love ; yet not one of them requires or includes obe- 
dience to a ceremonial law, while each and all imply obedi- 
ence to every moral duty enjoined in the moral law. Nor 
does any truly spiritual mind look to any ceremonial obedi- 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 23 

ence for proof of the spiritual regeneration of any man. Not 
even a bodily exercise in the external form of prayer, or praise, 
or exhortation, however intrinsically fit these may be, at suit- 
able times, is regarded as the ever-required exponent of love 
to God and man, and the invariable manifestation of true 
piety. Yet, how much more fit that these should be erected 
into an ordinance as "ordained of God" by an assumed inflex- 
ible law, than those arbitrary rites, so oft thus magnified in 
the eyes of men ? For, deprecate and protest as you will, if 
you teach that men have not given full proof of repentance, 
and have not " fulfilled all (moral) righteousness," until they 
have put on some form of external obedience, you have, to 
their view, raised that ritual to the dignity of a moral law, 
and have created in the mind of the novitiate the impression 
that something very nearly connected with salvation is hinged 
upon their proper observance of the arbitrary ceremonial. 
Hence a superstitious reverence for the ceremonial is engen- 
dered, as every reader knows, for it is everywhere seen. 
They deem that their moral state is not quite pleasing to 
heaven until they have bowed to some form of ceremonial 
obedience ! 

Yet if there be no ritual law enjoining upon each Chris- 
tian believer a form of preaching, of prayer, of praise, of 
worship, as there is not, while all these are intrinsically 
adapted to the Christian life and work, how much less should 
there be a Jaw enjoining that which has no intrinsic merit? 
Shall tli ere, then, be a law enjoining sacraments, or ceremonies 
of worship, the intrinsic value of which is at least ques- 
tionable? 

"What is Following Christ? 

So in regard to following Christ. The externalized con- 
ception is not only infinitely far from Christ's intent in the 
command, " Follow me," but it is almost infinitely low and 
unworthy of the Christian's thought. Men, claiming to be 
sage religious teachers,. talk of following Christ "down the 



24 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

banks of Jordan," as though this were an excellent thing, 
and very pleasing to Christ himself. If so, why not go to 
the Jordan (as Mahomet enjoined his followers to go a pil- 
grimage to Mecca), and there follow Christ down the banks 
of Jordan ? You would thus very literally be a follower of 
Christ. AVe will not say that it would prove you spiritually 
one ! You would much more consistently give proof of being 
truly in spirit a follower of Christ by visiting the sick, cloth- 
ing the naked, relieving the distresses of the poor, the orphan 
and the widow, and seeking to assuage the cup of life's sorrow 
everywhere ? You are not " made under the (Jewish) law," 
that you need to be purified (baptized) into the priesthood : 
you are, if regenerated, already a " king and priest" to God ; 
and you may, without waiting for any priest (as John was) to 
lead you down " Jordan's banks," or to any altar, or shrine, 
bring your soul, and your offering direct to Christ, and to His 
suffering poor, assured that you will be abundantly accepted 
without any canonical interposition of any earthly mediator 
or administrator of rites. 

If you think there is any excellence or virtue in following 
Christ in the external form, w T hy not be circumcised, and eat 
the Passover; why not recline at your meals as Jesus re- 
clined, and sleep upon such a mattress as did He ? If a minis- 
ter of Christ, why not commence your sermon without a text, 
oft, and without a song or prayer in form, and preach chiefly 
in the open air? If a young man, why not work at the same 
trade for life, and eat and drink similar food, and clothe 
yourself with similar raiment? How amazing the infatua- 
tion reached by centuries of bigoted and superstitious teach- 
ing, filling the imagination of otherwise earnest Christians 
with the conceit that a ceremonial likeness to, or imitation of 
Christ, is aught that Christ requires ! Hence the endless in- 
quiry after the manner of some of His bodily acts, and a 
zealous effort to attain to a full conformity thereto ! Whole 
denominations of Christians are continually slumping into 
this pit. Should not Christ's ministers have sufficient spiri- 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 25 

tual discernment to warn their flocks of the danger and folly 
of this? A mechanical obedience is not what Christ seeks, 
but the daily obedience of love. " What and if ye shall see 
the Son of Man ascend up where he was before ? It is the 
spirit that quickeneth ! The flesh profiteth nothing ! " And 
should you follow Christ, bodily toward heaven, as the build- 
ers of Babel did, for a little way, would that be of any 
avail? Suppose you follow Christ down the banks of Jordan 
and are there baptized precisely as he was, are you the 
better for it? Or is any one else the better or happier for 
your act ? 

Judaism required no Bodily Imitation. 

Even under the strict Jewish ritual law there was no effort 
to imitate one another in their ceremonial performances. 
Whom did Moses imitate when he took the hyssop branch, 
with scarlet wool, and dipping it in blood and water, sprinkled 
(baptized) all the people ? You say he was the mediator of 
that covenant, and the founder of the ritual law. Yes ; but 
what priest ever sought precisely to imitate Moses ? Can one 
be named ? Moreover, most of the purifyings under the law 
were self-administered, at least in part. Did they ever seek 
to imitate one another ? When they washed (baptized) them- 
selves, and bathed their flesh, as so oft, they evidently did as 
we of modern times do, — they used water with the hand, or 
with other means of appliance, to secure the bodily cleansing 
that they sought, having reference only to the result and not 
to the method of attaining it. No superstitious reverence was 
paid to a method then ; that was left to those who fail to un- 
derstand the spirituality of the Christian Dispensation. 

This superstitious homage to rites is left for those who fail to 
see that it is not possible for a spiritual dispensation to require 
an external ritual, a ceremonial routine, a mere bodily exer- 
cise, or bodily imitation one of another, or of some earlier 
prototype ; — who have also failed to see that if Jewish priests 
followed Moses the Mediator of the Old Covenant, in baptiz- 



26 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

ing typically, we, ministers of Christ, may follow Christ, 
the Mediator of the New Covenant, who certainly did not 
baptize typically. The determinate principle is this: we may 
forget what Christ did as " under the law," either in respect 
to circumcision, baptism, sacrifice, or Passover, which all was 
done that He might be fully accepted of the Jews, to obviate 
all ceremonial objections, and that those " under the law" 
might hear the call, and be "redeemed;" and we may follow 
Christ " in the regeneration," or what Paul calls " the reforma- 
tion," not in the oldness of the letter, but in that spiritual 
worship which the " Father seeks," and which requires no 
ritual or temple service either at Jerusalem or Samaria ; no 
altars red with blood of beasts, nor purifying s with human 
hands, either in Jordan, Enon, or Bethabara. 

The Judaic Economy a Rudimentary School. 

The Judaic economy given by pattern and instruction re- 
ceived in the " holy mount," was rudimentary in its nature ; 
a school for catechumens, taught by diagrams, rather than a 
laiv for those matured in the knowledge of God, and the way 
of salvation. Those diagrams could scarcely claim the autho- 
rity of positive law; they were simply prescribed methods of 
instruction, and never reached the altitude, nor wore the 
aspect of sacraments ; nor were they ever called by that name 
in all the ages of the Mosaic ritual. Did Moses or a prophet 
ever reprehend the people of Israel because they had neglected 
their external purifications? Nay, they were but too fond of 
placing their chief reliance on these. And in every age it 
has required the constant vigilance of the spiritual-minded to 
withhold the mass of worshippers from such a vain trust, 
where the ritual has been in use at all. But after the lapse 
into idolatry of which Israel in Egypt was guilty, a ritual, 
innocent in itself, and less imposing in pomp and circum- 
stance than that of the idolatrous nations, to which also a 
proper significance might be given, was " added," Paul says, 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 27 

because of "transgressions," until the "seed should come," 
unto whom was the "promise" of being the inheritor of the 
"purchased possession," through His one great sacrificial 
offering and atonement for man. Of this great work of the 
great Redeemer, all Jewish sacrifices and baptisms were sim- 
ply typical emblems and foreshadowings. They served in 
lieu of the antitype itself, the purpose of suggestive symbols 
of the real atoning sacrifice, and the real baptism which Mes- 
siah should enjoin and secure in the purifying of their hearts.* 
Through these, in the then state of need, moral lessons 
might be taught, and influences thereby exerted to withhold 
a half-reformed people from yielding to the constant tempta- 
tion to idolatry. But when the fulfilment or antitype of all 
these had come, and was seen and known of all, to keep the 
type before them still, would have been like keeping the taper 
burning after the sun has arisen with all his effulgence of 
light. How can any Christian deny this ? 



* Alluding to the difference between the Abrahamic and the Mosaic cove- 
nants, Rev. F. G. Hibbard says: "The reader will see that the ceremonial 
law was not the Church Charter under the former dispensation, but only the 
temporary discipline and system of elemental instruction under which Jeho- 
vah placed the Church for a season. The ceremonial law and the Abrahamic 

covenant are not to be confounded In the covenant of Abraham 'all 

nations ' were to be blessed. It contained the gospel to the Gentiles (Gal. iii. 8) 
as well as to the Jews. On the contrary, the institutes of Moses were rather 
adapted to a high spirit of nationality, and I may say, exchisiveness, among 
the Jews. One grand design of the ceremonial law was to secure the distinct 
preservation of the Jewish people until Christ should come. To these ends, 
the inexorable ritual of Moses was well adapted. Thus a 'middle wall of 
partition' was kept up between Jews and Gentiles, and a complete separation 
preserved. . . The ceremonial law is abolished, but the covenant of Abraham 
is established in Christ." Now the marvel of the ages is, that those who thus 
can write respecting the difference between a dispensation whose characteristic, 
as they affirm, is a ceremonial law, and one whose characteristic is, that it is 
spiritual, and has no ceremonial law, do not see that it would not be to tha 
breaking down of "partition walls" to annul one ceremonial law, and then imme- 
diately establish another, a law of baptisms, which was assuredly a part of 
the former ceremonial law. 



28 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Hibbard, the Methodist writer on Baptism, p. 28, well 



" These external ceremonies and symbols originated and assisted their first con- 
ceptions of truth; afterward came the long line of illustrious prophets, endowed 
with supernatural penetration and wisdom, and expounded more fully the spiri- 
tual sense of the ' law,' lifting the mind of the nation (the Jewish) through another 
ascending grade of divine knowledge. And when, finally, by these external 
means the principles of theology were fully communicated; when the Jews bad 
so associated with other nations by commerce and travel, but especially by 
colonizing themselves everywhere, so as to incorporate their elemental ideas 
of religion into other languages, and in some sense to transfuse their own 
principles into pagan systems of philosophy and religion ; when the human 
mind became thus in a measure prepared, when the fulness of time had come, 
' God sent forth his own Son/ the great Teacher, to abolish the elemental sys- 
tem, to mature those conceptions of truth, and to complete the illumination of 
the human mind. . . . These elemental principles once mastered by the mind, 
they could be easily taken and applied to various subjects at will, while the 
external machinery, which was the means of imparting them, could be dispensed 
with. The people of God need be 'no longer under a school-master/ they could 
now 'leave the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, and go on unto per- 
fection.' . . . All our abstract ideas are derived primarily through the outward 
senses; hence all primary words in all original languages, though many of them 
now stand for abstract ideas, originally represented sensible objects." 

See also Dale on origin of Baptisma and Baptistes. 

The above reasoning of Dr. Hibbard is eminently correct 
and clear, and it may be remarked that this logic covers the 
whole ceremonial and ritual law of the Jews, which, moreover, 
originated not as a law, but was employed by Moses as a 
means of moral instruction, and so continued by the Levites 
as a picture lesson for study, rather than as a blind allegiance 
to a statutory law. What did the Jehovah ever require of 
Israel, or any other nation, but to " do justly, to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with God." 

The very need of the type then, was the evidence not only 
of their estrangement from the knowledge of God, but also, 
that the perfect dispensation of fulfilled prophecy and promise, 
by the revelation of the all-efficient atonement, baptizer, and 
Saviour, had not yet come. These rituals were but sentinels, 
placed all the way to keep and point the way of the coming 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 29 

One ; and in the nature of the case, when He comes, these 
sentinels may stand aside. 

Ritualists have monstrously perverted the words of horta- 
tion to Moses on Sinai : " See that thou make all things ac- 
cording to the pattern shown thee in the mount ;" as though 
we were now to build an external tabernacle, as Moses then 
was directed to do. 

Such a charge was pertinent, and carefully observed by 
Moses, as head of that "ministration," and lawgiver and 
mediator of the old covenant. But no such pattern of ex- 
ternal things was given by Jesus on Calvary ; but rather the 
nailing of Himself and the old dispensation to the cross, that 
not the symbol and type should point darkly to the " king- 
dom of heaven ; " but the glorious antitype should, in its ful- 
ness be enjoyed, filling the whole moral horizon with the 
blessed illumination of the new dispensation, the " kingdom of 
heaven " already come. Is there any truth more clearly stated 
in the w r hole New Testament, and especially in the Epistles to 
the Hebrews and to the Gentile churches? We say, the 
vision that Moses saw in the mount related to the tabernacle 
which should be constructed in the wilderness by human 
hands ; which, Paul tells us, was the figure or symbol of the 
" true tabernacle," which is not built with human hands, but 
w T hich "God pitches and not man." 

What pattern, as co-worker with God, is man to follow 
here, but the pattern of the cross? 

We have no wilderness tabernacle now ; of course, we need 
none of its accompaniments, none of its sacrifices, baptisms, obla- 
tions ; all these belonged to that external tabernacle, which is 
now removed and superseded by the heavenly, where Christ 
"forever" pleads His one "offering," and where the Holy 
Spirit which He sends is forever the Purifier (Sanctifier), and 
every sanctified soul is God's temple. Has not Jesus entered 
into the " true tabernacle," and into the holy of holies (to 
which also He freely invites us), there to sprinkle the mercy- 
seat with the blood of the everlasting covenant, having ob- 
tained eternal redemption for us? 



30 KITUALIS3I DETHRONED. 

Do we need now to offer expiatory sacrifices ? Are we now 
(or ever) spiritually cleansed by the waters of baptism ? or do 
we need the cold external element, when the true spiritual life 
has come? Christ's baptism (of suffering, and of the Holy 
Anointing) now baptizes us. Do we need more than this ? 
The blood of" atonement" is now our sanctifier. Also, 

" That blood atones for all our race, 
And sprinkles now the throne of grace." 

It is true that even in the old dispensation, he only that 
had clean hands and a pure heart (unstained by sin) was 
accepted in God's " holy hill," and in the " most holy place !" 
Their outward circumcision was not accepted in lieu of the 
"circumcision of the heart." Should the annoying concision 
continue forever? Better that God should form our frames 
as He would have them at first. That ceremony, like every 
other, was for a local and temporary object. That attained, 
God never desired "vain oblations," nor " sacrifices" rather 
than "judgment, mercy, and the love of God." The moral 
end ; the fruits of righteousness, was all He ever sought, 
through these or without them. " What doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly Avith thy God?" The ceremonial was to be used 
during that " ministration" for such moral end. Yet so inef- 
fectual did it prove, that it was called the "ministration of 
death" (see 2 Cor. iii.) ; and also, " of the letter that killeth," 
rather than "of the Spirit that giveth life." Hence Christ 
"disannulled the commandment" (in the type or letter), "go- 
ing before," to introduce a more perfect ministration " of the 
Spirit." Not only is there an intrinsic inability and inapti- 
tude in a ceremonial to purify the soul, but all historic evi- 
dence is against the claim of rituals to be successfully service- 
able in this w T ork. They can only serve as piers or break- 
waters against what is worse. Alternating reformations and 
backslidings was the record of the Jewish nation after the 
Mosaic ritual was given, until the nation was well-nigh apos- 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 31 

tatized from God again. The Greek Church ritualists, and 
the Papal ritualists have afforded no better record. And 
what is the record of millions called Protestant : as the High 
Church Episcopal, the Lutheran, and the ritualistic " Reforma- 
tion" of Alexander Campbell in this respect? Is it any 
better ? 

Yet since the Mosaic ritual was disannulled, without a 
present definitive ritual law, how many myriads of arrogant 
claims to exemplify and correctly expound a New Testament 
ritual law have been made ? 

Assumptions of Infallibility. 



pertinent saying of Dr. Young, alluding to the too common 
conception of human frailty, and the brevity of life. So may 
it be as truly said, "All men think all men fallible but them- 
selves," specially in judging of theologic and revealed truth, 
and Church claims — and in all reasonings relative to a cere- 
monial law. The English prelate, contesting the claims of 
the Pope at Rome, boldly and very justly announces : " I 
hold that if any man be infallible, I am the man ! " This is 
the heart-language of e\ery independent thinker, who never- 
theless may be perfectly honest and unassuming in his search 
after all advancing light, and walking in all the light already 
attained. Truth is beautiful, and all radiant with glory to 
such an earnest and appropriating spirit. 

That mind is infallible in the sense of being incessant in its 
reaches after truth ; also in the fact of its constantly adding 
to its store new truth, and also in constantly looking at the 
old in a new and beautified light. 

Such a state of mind, moreover, will assuredly be found 
acceptable to God ; and ever approved in its aims and moral 
affections, yet ever fallible when compared with infinite 
wisdom itself. 



32 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Effort to find the Infallible Church. 

The effort to find the infallible church, composed of fallible 
men, is an effort to find immaculateness in a body which is 
not in any individual of that body. And the effort to detect 
the heaven-sanctioned church by its ritual, is as absurd as an 
effort to find a righteous man by looking at his dwelling, or 
the contour of his countenance. 

The true spirit of worship usually manifests itself in some 
external form — yet not always, for there may be a thankful 
or a praying spirit that never manifests itself in forms, as 
there may be an obedient spirit that has never yet had the 
opportunity of manifesting itself in the outward act. 

Church organization itself is but an expression of the spirit 
of life from God in its members — i. e., if it be a true church 
of God — it thus manifests the intent of its members to serve 
God, and worship Him in accordance with the degree of 
divine illumination given, and the best exercise of reason and 
judgment attainable. The illumination from God pertains 
to the spirit of worship and service ; man's reason and judg- 
ment select the mode that seems most in accordance with 
antecedents, or with the object in view. When men assume 
that God has given to the Christian Church, or continues in 
the Christian Church a prescribed ritual in any respect, they 
engraft both Judaism and Popery upon the Christian Church, 
and make it a hot-bed of contentions and strifes about that 
which intrinsically profits nothing, and which Jehovah never 
valued for its own sake. Every church must worship, if it 
worship in the sight of men, after some form ; but the large- 
hearted and enlightened Christian never stamps divinity 
upon his formula or ritual, or assumes that his brother man 
is less acceptable to God on account of his differing ritual. 

"Who is the Kitualist? 

The Eitualist is the man that claims divine authority for 
the specific rituals of his Church ; and excludes all others, 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 33 

measurably, at least, from heaven's favor, in his own esteem, 
on account of their divergences from his model. He may- 
discover the same assuming spirit in others respecting their 
rites, and may denounce them as sectarists and bigots for this 
cause ; but he never has discovered it to be bigotry and a 
spirit of ritualistic worship in himself. Thus by changing a 
word of our starting aphorism, we may say, "All men think 
all men bigots but themselves," or ritualists, as the case may 
be. And there is no cure for this ritualism, but to strike at 
its base, and admit that all that appertains to an organic 
Church, save the spirit of life from God, which constitutes its 
members one in spirit with Christ, is human, and of no more 
binding authority than anything else that is human, that 
good men may prescribe or approve. 

HOW TO FIND THE TltUE CHURCH. 

Suppose the organic body, non-organic, just as the Holy 
Spirit leaves each individual when renovated in heart, before 
any human, or church action or labor is attempted ; there 
you have all that is strictly divine in the church. All else 
is the result of human wisdom or unwisdom moved by bene- 
volent intent. 

The Divine Life takes the Mould of Circumstances. 

The divine life in the human soul takes form according to 
circumstances — according to the primal ideas of each nation, 
tribe or individual, moulded by education and antecedent 
example. In other words, this divine life takes the form of 
the mould in which it is run — and how oft is that mould or 
form, by each individual, through human weakness, deemed 
almost or quite as sacred and indispensable as the divine life 
itself! 

Few rise so near the primal source of divine life — the 

Sun of Righteousness, as to see that it is the same " light that 

lighteth" all, or to see over the walls that divide them from 

others ; and discern the light on the other side. Hence men 

3 



34 KITUALISM DETHRONED. 

value their own forms, and see all excellence in them, just in 
proportion to their distance from God, and their distance in 
heart affections from their fellow-men. 

Hence the too prevalent ritualism of churches and their 
bigotries of sect and creed. Yet each pities his neighbor as a 
ritualist, and is prone to congratulate himself that he has 
escaped that folly, or at least that he certainly has found 
God's appointed rites, for obedience to which God looks very 
complacently upon him. Thus the Independent pities the 
ritualism of the Low Church, and the Low Church, in turn, 
pities the ritualism of the High Church, and the High 
Church pities the Puseyite and the Papist for the same cause. 
The High Church historian is so blinded by his ritualism 
that he cannot give a fair and unbiassed history of his Low 
Church brethren, or of Quakers and Independents. And 
even the Independent and the Presbyterian, while proposing 
to write creeds that will embrace "all evangelical Chris- 
tians," will, perhaps, utterly ignore the Friends, the Mora- 
vians, or the Plymouth Brethren, each manifesting the spirit 
of Christian love and missionary zeal that many larger bodies 
of Christians (those that ignore them for example) would do 
well to imitate. Who can show a church creed, written of 
man, that will embrace " all evangelical Christians ? " Even 
those called union creeds are usually assuming and divisive in 
certain directions : showing that the writers have not God's 
eyesight, and God's expansive charity toward all that truly 
love Him. If aught beyond the Christian spirit were really 
and wholly of God, i. e., if church organization were as divine 
as is the new birth to holiness, dare we suppose that God 
would organize churches on a basis that would exclude one 
soul that Christ's blood had cleansed ? Surely not. 

Christ organized no Church. 

Christ did not organize his followers into a denomination 
called after his name; but, up to the time of His crucifixion, 
left them in the Jewish organization, yet purposing ere while 



CONCEDED AND DETEEMINATE PRINCIPLES. 35 

to extend the call far beyond the Jewish fold. Nor did he 
engraft Judaism, or the ceremonial law, upon Christianity, 
nor prescribe any ritual, which would have been both incon- 
gruous, and an unspeakable embarrassment to the new faith ; 
but used the ritual then current — otherwise He would havo 
added a new (Jewish) sect to those before existing. He 
aimed rather to bring the ritual into disesteem, and lay open 
an area for an undivided fold, composed of all the diverse 
nations, whose " One Lord, one faith, one baptism," should 
cement them as one forever. 

By the opposite assumption of an external polity, or ritual 
engrafted upon the Church by its founder, many Christian 
philosophers (and some who are not Christians) are enabled 
to deal damaging blows against the assumed churches, and 
their self-elected umpires of theology and polity in Christen- 
dom. Nothing has dishonored the church more than these 
assumptions and canonical pretensions of great, and oft 
good men, whose arrogance in this direction, however, tends 
to divide the fold of Christ, and is ever in violation of a true 
catholicity. 

Who hath made thee a judge, or umpire of the question : 
Where is the true Church? these acute philosophers may well 
ask the rival claimants of that honor. Is your charter direct 
from heaven, to the exclusion of your brother Christian who 
evidently has the signet of heaven as well as thee ? The 
true Christian knows that the true church of Christ must 
embrace " whosoever feareth God andworketh righteousness," 
whatever polities or rituals they embrace and observe, or 
whether they make use of any at all, or not. Yet from the Pa- 
pist to the Puseyite, and from the Puseyite to the Independent 
and the Baptist, each assumes his order and his ritual to be the 
alone heaven-approved, and the only one to be accepted and 
approved of men. And they may as well claim heaven's 
exclusive approval of their ritual, as to claim its appointment 
of heaven at all ! The proof of the one is as clear as the 
proof of the other. 



36 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

These Christian philosophers do not criticise and abjure the 
principles of the Christian system, only the ritualisms and 
superstitions of the leaders and champions of the Christian 
faith. The bigotry and infatuation of exalting convention- 
alities above the spirit of life, as seen in the humblest of 
Christ's friends, is, by them, scanned with philosophic and 
philanthropic eye, very much to the disparagement of those 
champions of the generic faith. If, therefore, the church of 
Christ cannot be saved from the narrow, canting, and un- 
catholic prejudices of archbishops, bishops, and doctors of di- 
vinity, it must ever stand vastly depreciated in the estimation 
of all true Christian philanthropists, and true church re- 
formers. 

A theology that eschews world-wide charity because of any 
divergence of creed or ritual, and eschews absolute catholicity, 
patterns after the false Komanistic Catholicity, and limps at 
every step in its work, and is, in principle, no better under the 
Protestant name, than is the Greek Church patriarchal pre- 
lacy, or the Papacy of the Roman Church, and the prelacy 
of the High Church episcopacy. For this self-assuming lack 
of charity, on the part of a self-assumed priesthood, is but 
acting the Pope with one's own conscience, and an attempt to 
act the dogmatism of Popes over the consciences and intelli- 
gence of all others. 

How Rituals are used. 

Rituals, maybe, and are used mainly to give power to a priest- 
hood, or a canonical enclosure of assumed saints, to dominate 
over God's heritage, and bring weak and uninstructed con- 
sciences in subjection — to keep up sect-boundaries, and win 
and hold honest yet superstitious believers in denominational 
folds — almost, or quite, assuming thereby to open or shut the 
door of heaven to men. Yes, they are made the " keys of the 
Kingdom," opening or shutting its pearly gates, and giving or 
withholding the canonical passport to all the blessings within. 
They assume to stand in Christ's place, with ex cathedra power 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 37 

to receive or cast away, to approbate and retain, or exorcise, 
and anathematize, according to the varying conceits of di- 
versely educated and fallible men. Before heaven we must 
arraign them as having usurped Christ's place over men's 
consciences, and as having supplanted Christian love, and 
blinded the eye to the behests of true gospel charity, and the 
peremptory demands of the moral law. 

And this, not by a perversion of a ritual law, but by a 
turning aside to a ritual law, which " yoke of bondage," and 
seed of schism, "neither we nor our fathers have ever been 
able to bear ; " and which Jesus Christ, the great Head of the 
church, never imposed upon his followers. He never gave to 
His church wisdom and understanding adequate to be of one 
mind respecting a ritual law, and it is impeaching His official 
dignity, as " Head over all to the church," to impute to Him 
the authorship of a law that can never be defined, and clearly 
understood and obeyed. 

For the love of Christ's sake, therefore, and for His divine 
honor, we protest against erecting the inquisition of some po- 
sitional or ceremonial test thus to exclude or make bigots of 
untaught Christian brethren. 

If you w T ould unite all the Christians of a place in an or- 
ganic union, it must be done on the simple basis of the unity 
of Christian love in each believer's heart — not on the basis of 
a like understanding of any ritual law, or any other incident 
or form, that, either in the past or future, may be connected 
with the organic action of Christians. 

For what Objects Christians may unite. 

Christians may unite and form organic churches for either 
of three purposes — or for all combined, viz : 1. For purposes 
of religious instruction only, and then they may co-operate 
with any and all who will seek the same end — even if they be 
but catechumens in Christ's school, not even claiming to 
have an experimental knowledge of the way of salvation. 
This is the Methodistic and Friends' plan. 2. They may or- 



38 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

ganize for the promotion of some specific reform, that pertains 
to the advance of Christ's kingdom and the lasting welfare 
of man ; and in this case they are required to receive only 
those who desire to give their influence to that specific branch 
of reform, and they are not exclusive, nor do they violate 
Christian love, if they do not receive all Christians, even, to 
their fold, and their ranks. They only require those who 
w T ould enlist in that particular form of warfare. They do not 
thereby necessarily disown, or disparage the work of those 
who are engaged in other departments of the great cause. 
3. They may organize for the exemplification of the true 
Christian spirit, and the full extent of Christian charity. In 
this case they are bound to receive all that are adjudged to be 
Christians, who desire their fellowship, rejecting none of these 
for any cause ; and receiving none that lack the evidence of 
the Christian spirit and life. 

Touching the second object specified above, anti-slavery 
Christians were often found organized for the promotion of 
that specific reform ; and this they did even with a design of 
rejecting and disowning those professed Christians who were 
pro-slavery, or neutral on the subject. And they were, no 
doubt, justified in this course, whatever charity may have af- 
firmed of some who were thus rejected. It was a method of 
administering needful Christian rebuke for public and glaring 
sin, in obedience to the behest, " Thou shalt in any wise re- 
buke thy brother, and not suffer sin upon him." But for 
Christians to differ respecting a ritual law is infinitely far 
from proving any sin against either party, as all must admit, 
yet those who make any ritual a test or boundary of fellow- 
ship, do so, we think, invariably with the implication that all 
that reject their test ought to have been in fellowship with 
them by receiving and adopting their ritual. Here is where 
their dogmatism and their Popery stand revealed. 

Let Ritualists do Justice to each other. 
Instead of looking upon their organizations as called for, 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 39 

in order to accomplish specific objects, as harmonious branches 
of the one common church of Christ, how many of the diverse 
organizations have assumed that their own particular branch 
is the only canonical church of Christ f 

Nearly all build upon the assumption that some ritual is 
the door into the church fold, and have each, of course, as- 
sumed that their own ritual, or polity, is the only one that is 
canonical, or heaven ordained. » 

And each impeaches the other for want of conformity to 
the divine pattern or model " shown in the mount ! " And, 
perhaps, each will accuse the other of being exclusive because 
themselves are rejected from their fellowship for nonconformity 
in rituals, not heeding the palpable fact that themselves are 
rejecting some others on precisely the same grounds. Baptists 
reject Pedo-Baptists fornoncomformity in rituals, and the Pedo- 
Baptists are not slow to censure their bigotry in so doing. 
Nevertheless, these Pedo-Baptists have not discovered that they 
are rejecting onebranch of the Church at least, the Quakers, for 
the same reason, and that themselves refuse to receive unbap- 
tized believers into their folds. Baptists and Pedo-Baptists 
are therefore planting themselves upon the same ritualistic 
basis. So each has a ceremonial law. Christian ministers 
oft read in Paul's epistles, and expound his teachings respect- 
ing the abolition of the ceremonial law, not perceiving that 
most of these ministers are really in bondage to a ceremonial 
law as grievous as any that Paul declaimed against. The 
Jews had a ceremonial law, they say, almost commiserating 
their pupilage under these "rudiments." So have you, my 
rite-bound brother, a ceremonial law, and you are as much in 
bondage to it as they ever were. 

Wear Non-ritualistic Glasses. 
Now, why not wear glasses that will enable you to see your- 
selves as others see you, and such as a true Christian freedom 
from rituals, and true Christian union require ? Nor be afraid 
to march straight up to a difficulty, and look full in the face, 



40 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

your own inconsistency ! That is what true Christian magna- 
nimity requires. God hath not given thee all wisdom as yet, 
and wisdom will not die with thee. Be willing to see the full 
sweep of a radical, levelling principle, though it lay thy 
shibboleths all low as others. Time was when rituals were 
not, and time will be when the false idea of their sanctity will 
pass away. The idea of their sanctity is naught but sacramen- 
tarianism, and remember that the true worship of God existed 
before these rituals had place, and brought them into being, 
and hence we may infer that the true worship of God may 
exist after they have ceased to ensnare and pervert the con- 
sciences of men, or have any part in God's true worship. If 
the true spirit of worship has in time past induced varying 
rituals, such spirit of worship in fallible men will continue to 
vary them, until all shall have passed away, or be entirely 
changed. 

Idols and Divisive Walls must fall. 

Rituals must cease to be made into idols before which 
befooled men bow themselves, honoring them more than 
they do their Christian brethren, and they must cease to be 
made into partition walls, or they must surely be obliterated. 
Judaism was appointed by God, but it failed ever to make the 
comers thereunto perfect, and it became a great snare, being 
substituted for spiritual religion, and a true worship of God. 
So God " found fault with it," and Christ " took it out of the 
way," save, as is seen, an imperfect church is found still 
clinging to shreds of it. 

An abuse of that which, in its time is good in part, may be 
a just cause for its utter disuse. A correct idea of religion 
may not be able to supplant a perversion or superstition 
otherwise. Judaism was, in part, good, but came to stand in 
the way of the union of Jewish and Gentile Christians; hence 
the necessity for its removal. It became a partition wall. 
Christ took away the enmity occasioned by those "ordi- 
nances" innocent in themselves. And if Christ has abol- 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 41 

ished the " law of commandments, contained in ordinances," 
you, who hold yourselves and the Christian Church subject to 
ordinances, are " teaching for doctrines the commandments of 
men," and abusing God thereby, by substituting an idol in the 
place of God ; a ritual law in the place of the moral law of 
love to God and man ; — thus you make God an infinite trifler 
in teaching that He has given a worthless, yea, an injurious 
law, yet that He prizes it more highly than your love to 
Him and to your brother man.* 

* The danger of placing a ritual law in the place of the moral law, and arro- 
gating the Divine sanction for "commandments of men," is illustrated by 
what Rev. John Hall, D.D., of New York, says of the Papal Church turning 
aside to the Popish institution of the Confessional. Alluding to what Pere 
Hyacinthe had said respecting it, Dr. Hall continues : 

* Now the Rev. Father laments that the men turn away, as a rule, from 
religion; and the women, 'essentially religious, loving, suffering/ 'sympa- 
thetic,' unable to ' be solitary in their religion ' must (the men having abdi- 
cated) 'go to the confessional.' This, it will be observed, is a return — and 
something more — from the Scripture ground to necessity. If the Scripture 
obliges the priest to hear confession and absolve, he needs no apologetic plea 
like this. 

" Now we submit a question at this point, and with profound respect ask to 
it the Rev. Father's attention. 

" Set up two similar institutions side by side, one simply divine, the other, 
however well meant and in itself unobjectionable, but human, and does not all 
experience show that the divine will be deserted for the human ? Set up with 
the Lord's Day holidays for religious uses, and they supersede the Lord's Day. 
Set up the Church and traditions beside the Scriptures, and they supersede 
the Scriptures. Set up the Supreme Pontiff along with Christ, and the Supreme 
Pontiff supersedes Him. Set up the human priesthood and the great High 
Priest is put out of view. The list might be easily enlarged. It is the old 
story of King Ahaz, in 2 Kings xvi. — fancying an altar he saw at Damascus, 
then sending the pattern of it to Urijah, then setting it up beside God's altar, 
then of approaching it, and then offering thereon ; and how he dealt with 
God's true ordinances the reader can study for himself. Precisely so God set 
up the priesthood of the family, which Father Hyacinthe honors, and the 
absence of which he deplores among Roman Catholics. Rome set up her 
priesthood beside it. The usual result has followed. Man's fixture is pre- 
ferred by man to God's. If the priesthood of the family is to be restored over 
Roman Catholic Christendom, it is to be by the abandonment of the Church's 
priesthood. Let Christ's ministers in all love and tenderness preach Christ in 



42 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 



Unsanctified Souls live in the Shell of Religion. 

Blind, unsanctified zeal feeds and prides itself on the husks and 
shell of religion ; and as the chameleon and other living crea- 
tures wear the color of that upon which they brood, so do these 
sticklers for the shell assume the variegated colors these shells 
reflect upon them. When they quote Christ's words spoken to 
Moses under a typical law, " See that thou make all things 
according to the pattern shown in the mount," they forget 
that Jesus gave no ritualistic pattern save the Mosaic ; neither 
on the Mount of Olives nor Mount Moriah, nor Calvary, save 
the pattern there, of suffering to the death to " draw all men 
unto Him." And Himself has said respecting all earthly 
shrines and rituals : "Neither in this mountain (of Samaria), 
nor at Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father, but they that 
worship Him (henceforth) are to worship him in spirit and in 
truth," and not according to the letter or form. Christ wor- 
shipped according to the law given on Sinai, but we have 
come to a better mountain, even to " Mount Zion, and to the 
heavenly Jerusalem," and to a better covenant than that re- 
membered by a ritual law — a covenant which, according to 
the promise, made under the old, is written in the heart — 
which " stands not in meats and drinks and divers baptisms, 

public and in private, and declare remission of sins to every believer in bim; 
let them come as near to men and women, and men as much as women, as 
human hearts can approach one another; but let them forego the claim to the 
Lord's unparticipated work, the forgiveness of sins ; and, with the removal of 
the human rival, the true scriptural priesthood of the family will, under the 
balanced and symmetrical teaching of divine truth, be regained, to the great 
good of men and to the glory of God." 

Modern opponents of Secret Societies oft allude to their use of man-made 
rites as a reason for their being discountenanced, since such rites thus em- 
ployed tend to the disparagement of those that are God-given. These oppo- 
nents of rites of human invention, would do well to bear in mind that saints 
are not known by their rites, but by the "fruits of the Spirit" wbich they bear. 
Moreover, the Christian Church has been on the chase after the God-given rites 
for 1900 years, and seem no nearer reaching the end of the search than when 
they first began. 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 43 

and carnal ordinances," but in the power of the Holy Ghost 
revealed in the souls of believers. 

Yet towering walls of bigotry and sect are built around 
rituals, called " ordinances," and " sacraments," like the flam- 
ing sword around the tree of life, lest any man come, and eat 
and live. Ostensibly the wall is built, lest the sacrament be 
defiled, or its sanctity be trampled on, which mockery of pre- 
tence if there be amazement in heaven, surely all heaven 
stands amazed at such exclusion and sacrifice of souls, for 
whom Christ died, for the sake of saving a dead form — a 
ritual ! which thus proves a curse to all who so idolize it. 

God is not afraid of any man's harming a rite, whether he 
observe it or not, if only his heart be right toward God and 
man. God is solicitous that we have pure and loving hearts. 
He is opposed to our neglect of the sacraments of truth and 
love, and righteousness. Benevolent Christian labor, con- 
sidering the poor, and doing good to others, is a much better 
sacrament in God's sight, than eating bread or drinking wine, 
or performing sprinklings or ablutions in a steepled sanctuary. 

When Sacraments may be necessary. 

Customs, and the superstitions in which men are educated, 
may render sacraments needful, as it was needful for Paul to 
circumcise Timothy " for the sake of the Jews," among whom 
he was about to take him as a Christian teacher, but it was 
Jewish superstition that was thus subserved, not any Christian 
law, save the general law of good will. Some know no other 
door to the Church, than by the use of rituals ; they have been 
so taught, and their consciences require their observance, and 
they scarce could feel at rest in any neglect of them. So the 
Papist as conscientiously says mass, and counts beads, and 
crosses himself, all sanctimoniously, because he has been so 
taught. 

So the Jew still eats his Passover, and Mahometan dervishes 
howl their worship or incantations by the hour. Ritualists, 
that think to be purified, or made meet for the Church, or in 



44 EITUALISM DETHKONED. 

any way to do God service by the waters of baptism, are just 
as wise as the above, and no wiser. And each and all are ne- 
cessary for man's good only as a matter of conscience, based on 
personal persuasion in the mind of each. 

Our Divine Father is not half as solicitous to continue 
Judaistic, Papal, Mahometan, or even Protestant rituals, as 
are their human devotees. With the purifying of man's 
heart, and his devotion to works of love and righteousness, 
God's revealed will terminates. This, from the beginning, 
would have satisfied Him : " Shall not the uncircumcision, 
which is by nature, if it fulfil the law (the moral law), judge 
thee who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the 
law (the law of love) ? " So God would spiritually purify and 
unite the Christian Church, and he that has this spiritual 
purifying and union with Christ and His people, shall ever- 
more judge those that have the outward purifying or bap- 
tism, and yet have not true union with Christ and all His 
people. 

" Israel after the flesh," with all its ritual, is ever judged by 
" Israel after the Spirit." Many saints before the law (the 
ritual law) was given could judge those who (afterward) 
" by the letter and circumcision did transgress the law." 

The outward baptism doth not offend God, if therewith its 
administrator and receiver doth not for that cause reject and 
"set at naught his brother for whom Christ died; " but when 
he does, his baptism is an offence unto God. His baptism is 
made w?i-baptisni, either in letter or spirit. God is willing to 
bless baptizers (with water), I e., to endure long with their 
ritualism, if they will still love and save men, otherwise He 
will spew their baptisms out of His mouth. He is as willing 
to bless non-baptizers (with water) if they love and save men, 
for they have equally fulfilled the law with those that baptize. 

Dost thou think that God has commanded all saints to join 
some Church that has a ritualistic door, and to pass through 
that door ? If so, which is the Church ? Is it the Congre- 
gational Church ? or the Baptist Church ? or the Presbyterian 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 45 

Church ? or the Episcopal Church ? or the Methodist Church ? 
or which of the forty or fifty extant orders of the Protestant 
Church ? or the Greek, the Lutheran, or the Papal Churches? 
If Paul were to return to earth, which would he decide to be 
the canonical Church? Or Jesus, the Great Head of all 
churches ? Perhaps, He would select (elect) your church, and 
your baptism, and meekly inform all the others that they were 
not acceptable in His sight. Thinkest thou this, O vain man 
and bigot ? Perhaps, He would place Himself restrictively 
in the German Reformed Church, or the Moravian, or the 
Friends, or among the Plymouth Brethren? Then what 
would your boastedly huge denominations say and do? We 
think that He elects even now, as individuals, all those in every 
organization, who serve Him with a loving heart, and a single 
eye. And Pie sanctions the election these make of the differ- 
ent folds in which they choose to worship Him. He doth not 
quench the smoking flax anywhere, nor break the heart that 
trusts Him. 

The above-named different folds and organizations are all 
necessary, it seems, in order to enfold and employ all the 
workers for Christ, and to exhibit their varied conceptions of 
polity and duty; and their varied rituals are all needful and 
obligatory, simply because the adherents of these various 
schemes are so instructed, and, therefore, so assume, and for 
no other reason whatever ! " Conscience, I say," says Paul, 
" not thine own, but of the other ; for why is my liberty judged 
of another man's conscience?" * 

And these varied churches are all canonical, if baptized 
with Christ's Spirit, and doing Christ's work, and for no other 
reason whatever. 

The true Idea of the Church. 
The definition some give to the term Church is utterly 
sacramentarian and false. That is, " It is an organized body 

* Will the child, born and educated by Puritans, be aught else than a Puri- 
tan, as a general law? "The disciple is as his master." This truth enforces 
upon spiritual Christians the duty of "teaching all nations" and educating 
the world aright. 



46 KITUALISM DETHRONED. 

of Christians, united for the purpose of maintaining Gospel 
ordinances." * Ordinances, they make the door into the 
organization. Does the organization exist for the sake of the 
door ? And it is pure assumption, we have seen, that the 
Church of Christ is made by ordinances — i. e., those that are 
technically so called. If you say institutions of the Gospel, 
rather than ordinances, we make no demurrer, for all the 
organized modes of benevolent labor are institutions of the 
Gospel. These comprehend all the ministries and offices of 
the Church — all the charities, and societies, and benevolent 
channels through which the Church acts. And many of these 
benevolent and Christian agencies, which, however, are not 
called Churches, much more nearly exhibit the mind of Christ, 
and His blessed work, than many that are called churches. 

The Young Men's Christian Associations, for example, com- 
posed of individuals adhering to the different (so called) 
churches of our large towns and cities, oft much more nearly 
represent Christ's ideal of what His own Church should be 
and do, than the bodies to which they confess allegiance as 

* Hibbard, a recent Methodist writer, thus defines a visible Church : 

1. " A congregation of persons who hold those cardinal doctrines of the 
Bible which are necessary to make, a person wise unto salvation. 

2. " They worship God according to His own will and directions, written or 
otherwise expressed. 

3. " They are distinguished by the world at large by a particular mark, or 
sign, appointed by God as a token of their fidelity to Him, and of the Divine 
favor to them." 

In regard to the first definition, we insist that "devils" themselves, and 
millions of "whited sepulchres" on earth, hold the "cardinal doctrines" 
necessary to salvation. 

In regard to the second definition, viz: "They worship God according to 
His written or otherwise expressed will," we have to say that God has " writ- 
ten " no formula for " worship," and that " forms of worship " are no proof of 
a Church of Christ. 

And as to the third, be it remembered, that no external "mark," or " sign," 
is any proof, whatever, of God's favor to man or of man's fidelity to God. 

Our Shepherd doth not mark His sheep in that way ! 

His seal, and signet, is the Holy Spirit given ; — the evidence, the "fruits of 
the Spirit." 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 47 

churches ; albeit they celebrate no ordinances, and introduce 
to their membership by no rituals. 

So Missionary Societies, Christian Commissions, and Christian 
Unions, which are working for Christ and seeking to extend the 
knowledge of His name, are as really Churches of Christ, as 
those bodies, more compact, which have gained the appellation 
of churches, in the dialect of men. The Friends' organizations 
can be called societies or churches, while eschewing rituals 
and a ceremonial law ; why not those that do not eschew 
them, but do not use them in their corporate capacity ? Does 
not custom blind the eyes of most of us to the essential 
nature of things ? 

We stated that there were three objects Christians might 
propose as the aim of an organization to be called a church : 
1. A union of Christians and their friends, for the purpose of 
receiving religious instruction. Such a body among Congre- 
gationalists and Presbyterians is called a Society, in which 
their churches inhere, constituting a part of the Society, and 
mainly directing its movements. This body, we perceive, is 
wider than the Church — as now technically understood — but it 
is precisely the form in which Jesus Christ left his followers at 
His crucifixion. The use of " ordinances " belongs not to such 
a Society as universally admitted. 2. The second purpose, as 
stated, for which a church might exist, is to press on gome 
reform, or rebuke (so-called) church organizations for non- 
fealty to Christ's law of love, or purity. These, it is per- 
ceived, must necessarily be narrower in their fellowship than 
the whole sweep of the denominational churches ; since their 
very existence is designed oft to erect a standard that shall 
be a living reproof of those that are remiss, and this they 
usually propose to do, in part, through the sacramentarian 
regard for rituals, so common in Christendom ; and herein 
their assumed sacraments may be of some use. 

3. The third purpose of organization, named, viz. ; the union 
of Christians, as such, for Christian fellowship, watch-care, 
worship and labors ; and this is the ostensible purpose of most 



48 HITUALISM DETHRONED. 

evangelical churches, and many of them hold that this fellow- 
ship should be as wide as Christ's true spiritual fold. Yet 
very few, if any of these denominations have reached thus 
far, we have seen ; but most of them have erected barriers in 
the form of rituals, in the way of the universality of such 
fellowship. These barriers were not designed to be placed as 
barriers, but as evidences of supposed fealty to Christ ; never- 
theless they do exist as barriers, and must so remain, as long 
as the sacredness of rituals is maintained. 

Extent of Visible Fellowship. 
Our view of the extent of Christian fellowship is, that it 
should be as wide as Christ's spiritual fold, and that this spi- 
ritual fold is to be known, not by any adoption of, or consent 
to outward rites and symbols, nor by laboring in the same 
organization, but by the spirit of penitence, humility and 
grace, together with the works of faith and labors of love 
which are exhibited. Thus hear the Advance commenting on 
Papal discussions, resulting from the German and Austrian 
revolt from the decisions of the late Council at Rome. It says : 

"All high-churchism is finding its position untenable. The Church of 
Christ is not mere form; it rises superior to Congregationalism, to Presbyteri- 
anism, to Episcopacy, and to Papacy. Paul said, ' The kingdom of God is 
not in word but in power.' Look for 'the power/ and you will find 'the 
kingdom.' Pure doctrine, pure worship, pure living, resulting in sinners 
converted, and saints edified, evidence the presence of the true Church, and 
the actual reigning of che King in His kingdom." 

There you have it, and we know that these tests are not 
restricted within any denominational lines, nor to Dissenting 
or Protestant, or National or State churches, but in every 
nation, community, polity and sect, "He that feareth God 
and worketh righteousness, is (equally) accepted of Him." 

We insist, therefore, that no question of organization or 
ritual shall come in to make weight on the question of Christian 
fellowship, but every man, everywhere, shall be recognized and 
actually received on the bare question of Christian character, 
totally irrespective of all other issues. 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 49 

And let the broad principle be recognized that Christians 
of any fold are under no more obligation to observe sacra- 
ments, or initiate by certain rites, than they are to carry dia- 
grams into a church to illustrate a discourse, or to wash them- 
selves in the midst of a discourse to illustrate spiritual purify- 
ing. Religious teachers may do these things if they choose, 
but to teach that they are so taught of God, is simply to con- 
found Christianity with Judaism, and to supplant the moral 
law by a ceremonial law. 

The sacramental, or ritualistic idea of the Church, will for- 
ever narrow the boundaries of Christian fellowship and influ- 
ence, while the idea that bases the Church on catholic love 
and Christian work as its bond and object, ever enlarges the 
boundaries of Christian fellowship, and tends to increase 
Christian love and zeal for every benevolent work. The con- 
ception that the Church is for work and not for a sacramental 
glorying in each other and in one's self, expands the heart, 
until it takes in every Temperance Society, every Anti-slavery 
Society, every Missionary Society, Young Men's Christian 
Association, Christian Commission, Bethel Society, Magdalen 
Society, Revival Effort, etc., as part and parcel of the Church 
and its working power, and its true exponent, pointing di- 
rectly to where the Church is, and who are its members, rather 
than any eating bread or drinking wine together, or perform- 
ing ablutions and baptisms from the days of John the Bap- 
tizer (the Purifier), until now. These best illustrate Chris- 
tianity. 

What Sacramental Churches are built upon. 

The sacramental churches are built on conceit and preju- 
dices, and evidence a perverted idea of what God wills and 
prizes, like the Jews' legalism and bondage to Moses in 
Christ's day (when the "vail was on their hearts"), and like 
the Papal idea of the Church to-day ; and the Coptic, Arme- 
nian, and Greek Churches, each and all seeing the Church 
only in the shell or rind of its ritual, not in any spirit of life 
4 



50 RITUALISM DETHRONED, 

from Christ in their own souls. Even the prophets of old 
denounced this conception of the Church ; see Isaiah i. 11-17 : 
" To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
me? ... Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul 
hateth : they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear 
them." Is not God as "weary to bear " the baptisms and 
sacramental "feasts" of to-day, which are continually being 
put in Christ's stead, and made barriers to Christian love, 
and put in place of the " cleanness" of the heart and works of 
love and mercy ? May we not now, as properly as then, say 
to the sects : " Wash you ; make you clean ; put away the evil 
of your doings ; . . . cease to do evil, learn to do well . . . judge 
the fatherless; plead for the widow," etc. Micah sets this 
matter forth in words of unmistakable import ; see Micah vi. 
6-13 : " Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow 
myself before the high God ? Shall I come before him with 
burnt offerings" (sacraments)? etc. "He hath showed thee, 
^ man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of 
thee, but to love mercy," etc. 

Sacramentarianism is to wane. 

The sacramentarian churches are all to evanish before the 
rising light and power of a true spiritual Church, just as Pro- 
testantism, which is less sacramentarian than the Papacy, is sup- 
planting the Papacy, and is reforming the Coptic, Greek, and 
Armenian Churches. As this sacramentarianism decreases, 
love and holiness will increase. Christ's baptism of the 
Spirit is demonstratively purifying and uniting, while ritual 
baptism and all sacramentarianism is as demonstratively the 
reverse. Eating Christ's body by faith in Him who is invisi- 
ble (the bread from heaven), demonstratively gives life, while 
eating sacraments (bread of earthly elements), as demonstra- 
tively gives self-complacency, a censorious spirit, and divisive, 
and a false idea of the work and will of Christ. 

As Christ said, " The hour is coming when neither in the 
mountain of Samaria, nor in Jerusalem shall men worship the 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 51 

Father," so the hour is coming, as the American Baptist 
(a New York periodical) admits, when men shall neither im- 
merse nor sprinkle, and call it baptism, or in obedience to a 
baptismal law. " In the Millennium," that journal says, " all 
these baptisms may be done away." If so, and we admit it, 
how much holier and how much nearer the Millennium ought 
we to be, before we begin in good earnest, to lay aside these 
un-Millennial rituals and incumbrances ? Will not the true 
Millennial doctrine and work, by a truly Millennial Church, 
more swiftly advance the Millennium than one that insists on 
holding the Church in bondage to the law of ceremonials, and 
to that which is a stumbling-stone to all the churches? 

If ritualism is unfitted to the Millennium, it is unfitted to 
that which is the preparatory work, the advance steps to the 
Millennium. The Millennium is to be no new dispensation, 
but the consummation of this ; hence nothing that is of 
divine appointment for the Christian Dispensation can be 
supplanted by the rising light and supernal glory of the Mil- 
lennium. 

Error dies slowly — Time tries Systems. 

Men will drink in and retain fallacies and error for whole 
generations, which will require whole generations of weari- 
some and earnest endeavor to remove. When will the fogs 
of Judaism be dissipated from the Jewish mind, and from the 
minds of Judaizing Christians ? When will Paganistic super- 
stitions die? When will the doctrine of baptismal regene- 
ration die out of the Papal and Lutheran Churches, and 
the Greek and Armenian Churches? The long dominion of 
such superstition and errors does not sanct fy them nor make 
them truth. And the puerile logic of church-founders and 
defenders, and the defenders of ritualistic superstition is 
for a marvel to those who ask a semblance of proof of the 
thing asserted. For example, Dr. Hopkins, in his " Chris- 
tian Instructor," a manual prepared for the doctrinal in- 
struction of the earlier classes in college ; as a part of the 



52 EITUALISM DETHKONED. 

evidence of a change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the 
first day of the week, urges the fact that the early Christians 
for a series of years observed both the seventh and the first 
days of the week as sacred days, or Sabbaths ; and in the 
sequel rested upon the first as the Sabbath. Now the his- 
toric fact is undoubted, and also that some Judaizers much 
longer retained the seventh day Sabbath than other Chris- 
tians ; but what connection this logic has with the proof of 
a divine appointment of the change of the day, who can see? 

We believe in the first day Christian Sabbath ; but had we 
not other proof of the propriety of its observance, we should 
deem the proof entirely wanting. Dr. Hopkins, if we mistake 
not, employs precisely similar logic in proof of the substitution 
of baptism in the Christian Church, for the circumcision of the 
Jewish Church : " They were contemporaneously observed for 
a series of years ; and finally, baptism supplanted the Jewish 
circumcision." And it is assumed that this must have been 
done by the Divine direction. 

Conceding that the Church has Divine teaching in the 
spiritual life, and wisdom from above in her work of love, we 
nevertheless repudiate the Episcopal and Papal claim of 
authority from God to establish ordinances, laws, and liturgies. 
Circumcision and baptism were contemporaneous through all 
the Jewish history, and in the Christian ages circumcision 
might have waned and baptism taken its place, without assum- 
ing & Divine warrant therefor ; and the conceit that water- 
baptism, as practised by Christians, differs in spirit, end, or 
aim, from water-baptism practised by Jews, is an assumption 
wholly gratuitous. 

And did not circumcision come to an end (among Jewish 
Christians) largely on account of the Jewish national death ? 
And were not the Jewish " divers baptisms " largely revived 
a century later, by Judaizing Christians, and that after 
Paul had delivered the Gentile Churches, to a great extent, 
from the bondage of ordinances ? In the proper place we 
shall see this to be the truth of the case. 



CONCEDED AND DETERMINATE PRINCIPLES. 53 

To have a ritual (baptism) called " Christian " take the 
place of " divers baptisms " called Jewish, we shall see was 
never Paul's aim. But it was his aim to leave the Christian 
Church in Gentile lands unfettered by a divisive, restrictive, 
and cumbersome ritual. Paul taught that " circumcision 
availeth nothing," — not that baptism " avails " in its place. 

He taught that the true baptism is the spiritual baptism 
into Christ, and not a baptism by w r ater that leaves its subjects 
as far from Christ as they were before. 

Others have assayed to prove pedo-baptism (since it was a 
Jewish custom), from the fact that there is nothing forbidding 
it in the New Testament. 

We have never read a prohibition of wearing white robes, 
counting beads, or saying prayers for the dead. Are these 
Papal customs, therefore, of Divine appointment ? 

Yet whole generations, and even whole centuries of Christian 
teachers will confuse themselves by such logic, and Church 
creeds, and ecclesiastical systems are based thereon. And if 
a writer or speaker will strike at such logic and such systems 
»and creeds, why, he " takes away our gods, and what have we 
more ? " 

Nevertheless, time tries all creeds and systems ; and the out- 
working evil from an evil cause, the creaking and tottering, 
where foundations are rotten or disjointed, evinces, in due 
time, the need of a surer foundation taking the place of the 
effete. Judaism did not make the " comers " thereunto perfect ; 
nor have the Papal, Greek, and Armenian rituals. They have 
all, as systems, been weighed in the balances and found want- 
ing. " By their fruits (the fruits of Sodom) ye shall know them." 

Pure and spiritual religion dies out under their baleful and 
degenerating influence. So in many of the Protestant sects, 
as evidenced by the High Church Ritualists, and those stick- 
lers for water-baptism, who build sects and communions on 
an adherence to the rite of immersion, thus making one cold, 
lifeless ceremony the end of the law for love, fellowship, and 
communion in the household of faith. 



CHAPTER II. 

ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 

Scripture Argument. 

WE (who wholly eschew church ritualism) propose to leave 
those forms of ritualism which hold the High Church 
Episcopacies in thraldom, since the dissenting religious press 
and pulpits are amply exposing them, and to address ourselves 
to the work of criticising the more widely disseminated ritual- 
ism of the prevalent sects (by which they are continued as 
sects, without Bible warrant), and whereby Christian love is 
restrained, and the higher plane of Christian life and fellow- 
ship in Christian labor is prevented ; and there is much waste 
of effort and means in building up that which must ultimately 
be torn down. 

"We propose to deduce from Scripture teaching and the logic 
of the case, that ordinances, by Protestants so called, are sim- 
ply borrowed Judaisms, undefined as to time and manner in 
the early Christian Church (being pre-defined only by the 
law of Moses), contingent as to observance in the early church, 
and received from, and ranked with the other ceremonies of 
the prior dispensation ; and therefore are not positive institu- 
tions, nor of any binding force in the Christian Church. That 
moral expediency, or temporary utility, then and now, among 
those who have received a Jewish or ritual training, is the 
only reason why they need be observed at all. And the 
same with respect to any other form or rite. If we succeed, 
we shall have established the position that there is no cere- 
monial law in the Christian Dispensation. 
54 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 55 

Now, let no sectarian be alarmed at this proposition, for the 
writer was also " a Pharisee of the Pharisees," " made under 
the law " of ritualism — a Baptist of the " straitest sect " and 
" regular order," coming with all the credentials of baptism, 
and ordination, and theological parchments, and of ritual 
observances according to the appointed order of sect worship- 
ping — "an Hebrew of the Hebrews," touching the ceremonial 
law. But all these he now counts loss for Christ and truth, 
and boldly takes the ground that the Christian Dispensation 
knows no ordinances, or ritual law. 

Why precisely Two Sacraments and no more ? 

A strange and mysterious fact may be observed in relation 
to the attitude of Protestant Churches, viz.: that rejecting all 
other rites, symbols, types or means of grace as " ordained " 
by Divine appointment and authority, they fasten upon two 
undefined and ambiguous symbols as of special and enduring 
obligation in the Christian Church. These are Baptism and 
the Eucharistic Feast. No such positive law is claimed re- 
quiring all Christians to preach, or pray, or sing, or visit the 
sick and anoint them with oil, or wash the feet of the saints 
in their assemblies, or to worship after any prescribed model. 
Yet all these, save the " washing," may be truly useful and 
indispensable as Christian duties ; but these Protestants have 
affixed the seal of sacredness to the arbitrary signs that can 
claim no intrinsic necessity or essential utility, and claim for 
them the express authority of the Great Head of the Church. 

The Papists, on the other hand, against whom these Pro- 
testants protest, affirm the ordinances or sacraments to be 
seven! And we presume that the Greek, and Armenian, and 
Coptic and Nestorian Churches, virtually recognize the same 
number. Now where is the reason for this ritualizing* or 
sacramentarianism being carried so far as to two positive 
ordinances, and why, if these be conceded, go no further ? Is 
the New Testament silent respecting any other ceremony or 
ritual ? By no means. Others are not mentioned as oft, per- 



56 ItlTUALISM DETHRONED. 

haps, but certainly are as positively and really enjoined. By 
what rule do these champions of a ritual New Testament law 
admit some to be obligatory and reject others? Come, thou 
ritualist, bring forth thy " strong reasons ! " 

Protestant Sacraments but subsidized Jewish Kites. 

Besides, the two rites (sacraments) that Protestants have 
assumed to be incumbent and unceasing, were both cotem- 
poraneous with, and perpetuated through the whole Jewish 
economy. 

What are they, then, but subsidized Jewish rites? exotics, 
sought to be grafted forever on the Christian system ? The 
Passover Feast is known to be Jewish, which the Christian 
Eucharist but perpetuates. And Dr. .Wall, in his "History 
of Baptism," has demonstrated the same respecting water- 
baptism. It is perfectly certain that it is first introduced into 
the New Testament record by no prescriptive law, but histori- 
cally. Hence it is as certain that it came from, and was a 
" rudiment " or constituent element of the ritual dispensation 
just closing as the New Testament record is opened. It is 
just as certain that all the purifyings of the Jews were called 
baptisms by the early Christian teachers as that they were 
practised at all. They were also a part of the Jewish ritual 
law. (See Heb. ix. 1, 8, 9, 10.) 

"Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of Divine service, and 

a worldly sanctuary The Holy Ghost this signifying that the way into 

the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle 
was yet standing ; . . . . which was a figure for the time then present, <fcc, 
.... which stood only in meats and drinks and divers baptisms and carnal 
ordinances, imposed on them till the time of reformation." 

Now the " time of reformation " is under the Dispensation 
of Christ. (See 13, 14 v.) 

* For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of a heifer " (elements 
by which some of the former baptisms were administered) " sprinkling the un- 
clean, sanctified to the purifying of the flesh ; how much more shall the blood 
of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, 
purge" (i. e. purify,) " your conscience from dead works " (sinful works) " to 
serve the living God." 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 57 

So the 10th chapter continues the theme. (See 4, 9, 10 
and 14 v.) 

" For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats " (elements used in 

fonner baptisyns) " should take away sins Then said he, Lo, I come to 

do thy will, God ! " [Gud's icill is our sanctification ! ] " By the which will 
we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ" (not by ritual- 
baptism) " once for all. For by one offering He hath perfected forever then) 

that are sanctified." 

» 

Synonyms of Baptism. 

Now Alexander Campbell and Pres. E. Beecher inform us, 
that in Christ's day baptism, and purification, and the New 
Birth, or Regeneration, and Sanctification, and Dr. Dale adds, 
Merging into Christ, were all synonymous terms. If so, they 
are all attained by Christ's one offering, accepted by faith, and 
not by any " carnal ordinances," for these were only to endure 
" till the time of reformation," i. e., until Christ's effectual, 
offering should commence its saving work. 

And mark, this offering of Christ " once," this shedding of 
His own blood, in contrast with the inefficiency of the blood 
of bulls and goats, shall " forever purge the conscience of 
those sprinkled (baptized) thereby," " for it speaketh better" 
(more effectual and enduring) " things than that of Abel." 
See Hebrews xii. 24 : "For we are come to Jesus, the Mediator 
of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speak- 
eth better things than that of Abel," who offered the first 
sacrifice that God ever accepted. 

Now, this " blood of sprinkling" to which " we are come," 
is shed only once for all time, — not yearly, as under the law — 
i. e., the old covenant ; hence this baptism (of Christ's blood), 
received not by any human administrator, but by faith, puri- 
fies the conscience from sin, and "perfects forever those sanc- 
tified thereby." If such be not Paul's reasoning concerning 
the baptism of the Old Dispensation as contrasted with the 
"one baptism" of the New, we have failed to comprehend it. 
Mark vii. 2-5, 8, and John iii. 25, 26, will abundantly show 
that the Jewish cleansings, or purify ings, were called bap- 



58 EITUALISM DETHEONED. 

tisms. Mark says, " For the Pharisees and all the Jews ex- 
cept they wash" (nipto, to wash) "their hands oft, eat not, 
holding the traditions of the elders. And when they come 
from the market, except they wash" (baptizo here used as a 
synonym of nipto) " they eat not. And many other things 
there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing " 
(baptizing here used) " of cups and pots, brazen vessels and 
beds." Klinon (Gr.) here evidently refers to beds, which like 
all other domestic furniture and utensils the Jews punctili- 
ously, and very superstitiously, oft purified, lest some ceremo- 
nial uncleanness therefrom might defile them. Thus they 
carefully baptized (" made clean ") the " outside of their cups 
and platters," while their own inward man was " full of all 
uncleanness." 

So by John (iii. 25) we learn that there arose a dispute 
about "purifying" between John's disciples and the Jews. 
And the next verse informs us that this was about " baptism." 
Thus we learn that John's baptism (with water) was a con- 
tinuing of the purifyings of the Jews. And Christ's disciples, 
before the law dispensation ended, and ere the Gentiles were 
called, continued the same. And many Christians, a century 
or two later, who should be called mongrels, half Jew and 
half Christian, sacramentized these daily ablutions, calling 
them baptisms ; hence arose in the second century the sect 
called Emero-Baptists, i. e., daily baptizers, which Ambrose 
designates when he says, " For what else in this daily sacra- 
ment do we teach except that sin is drowned," (alluding to 
the deluge,) " and error destroyed ; while piety and innocence 
remain safe." 

AVe may have occasion to allude to these again. So the 
"daily breaking of bread," mentioned in Acts ii., as succeed- 
ing the spiritual awakening on the day of Pentecost, was evi- 
dently a merging of the many feasts of the Jews (the Jew 7 s 
observed ten national festivals), into one "feast of love," or 
"breaking of bread" with, and thus showing fellowship with 
the poor, by the more wealthy early Christians; and we have 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 59 

marvelled that there had not arisen a sacramentizing sect of 
" daily bread-breakers," as we have now several that " break 
the bread " every Lord's Day. 

Origin of Baptism. 

Learning from Paul, Hebrews ix. 10, that the Jews prac- 
tised "divers baptisms ;" and from Mark vii. 2-8, that some 
of these, self-imposed, or otherwise, were practised daily, and 
from John iii. 25, 26, that the purifyings of the Jews were 
called baptisms ; and from the record of John's (the Baptiz- 
er's) introduction to the Jewish nation, as recorded in Mat- 
thew iii., that he was in continuance of a custom well under- 
stood, since just prior to his work no baptismal law is recorded 
as having been given ; we are led to the inquiry, where and 
when did the law for baptism originate ? Like the sombre 
shadows that rested over certain terminal points in Mirza's 
vision, so the dense shades that, either from ignorance or de- 
sign, have been suffered to rest upon the origin of baptism, 
have stood largely in the way of deluded ritualists, that they 
did not see, and could not see the error of their impressions 
respecting its origin, and hence were held unaware of the fact 
that they were in bondage to a Jewish, and not to a Christian 
law. Let ritualistic baptizers not be unaware of the fact that 
baptisms, in all the ages through which any records reach, 
were practised as much before the Christian era, as since, and 
that by heathen nations as well as Jews ; and by the Jews, as 
the Christian era approached, with as much superstition and 
addenda of diverse ceremonies, perhaps, as now among the 
Papists : See Mark vii., and the Jewish Rabbis' accounts of 
baptismal ceremonies. 

In truth every heathen nation had a law of baptisms as 
well as the Jews, and this, in connection with their reli- 
gious worships and festivities. Says Robinscn, a Baptist his- 
torian : 

" Purifying by water is of the highest antiquity; anterior to Judaism itself. 
The Romans, Greeks, Hebrews, Egyptians, Etruscans., Ethiopians, Druids and 



60 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Celts practised it. And all other people of whom any knowledge has come 
down to the present time." 

They practised it "before, i. e. f preparatory to, worship or sa- 
crifices, and also preparatory to initiation into the mysteries. 
Holy water was kept in the temples of the gods for these 
purposes." See p. 272. See also his account of their modes 
of purification, their baptisteries, etc. He also says, that 
the Ethiopians (after becoming Christians) "rebaptize an- 
nually in commemoration of Christ's baptism, and also cir- 
cumcise their children, male and female, on the eighth day." P. 368. 
He also speaks of some who " baptize by fire, or in fire." P. 364.* 

Carrying the history down the track of time, he finds Ma- 
hometans disputing as hard about baptism (its mode) as 
Christians do. He quotes the Persian and Turkish bigots, 
who baptize their hands and arms (as see Mark vii. above, 
respecting the Jews), and these Mahometans, in constant and 
fierce disputes, resulting in rival sects, on the question whether 
they shall wash up or down, i. e., whether they shall begin at 
the wrist and wash upward, or begin at the elbow and wash 
downward. The question appears to be about as sublime, of 
as much moral efficacy, and as hotly contested, as whether they 
shall immerse, pour, or sprinkle in Christian baptism. Perhaps 
the two collateral contests will about as soon come to an end. 

But history records no such dispute about the real ritual 
law of the Jews. The Divine Lawgiver, who, through Moses, 
prescribed it, so defined it, that there has been none occa- 
sion of a war about their ceremonials among the Jewish tem- 
ple worshippers. Presumptively, this should be so from 
the outset of their observance to the end. A law, to be a 
law, must not be ambiguous. (See ceremonial law as given by 
Moses, specially in Exodus and Leviticus.) What bearing 
should this self-evident truth have in the mind of our Chris- 

*Let this statement of Dr. Robinson lift the veil especially from those Bap- 
tist (immersionist) ritualists who have been so willing to remain in igno- 
rance of the fact that baptism preceded the mission of John (Christ's fore- 
runner), and was practised at least through all the Jewish ages. This obscurity 
respecting the origin of baptism is not to the honor of those teachers that 
place so much stress upon the ritual. 



OEIGIN AND IMPOET OF BAPTISM. 61 

tian sects which are in antagonism on the subject of baptisms ; 
resulting id, perhaps, a thousand differing sects on that issue 
alone ; and, perhaps, four times that number of differing views 
and teachings on the subject ? 

But having found the Jewish baptisms a part of the Old 
Testament economy (in Paul to the Hebrews), we pro- 
pose to show when and where these baptisms had their origin. 

Custom and not Law originated Baptism. 

We have said that the record of baptisms is introduced in 
the New Testament without a prescriptive law. It is precisely 
so in the Old Testament, showing that Robinson's testimony 
respecting the ancient prevalence of baptism applied to the 
Jews as well as to all other nations — and showing that a 
physical and social as well as moral effect was sought. Their 
baths and ablutions were evidently a sort of climatic necessity, 
and were turned to the account of religion by all the Asiatic 
nations of antiquity. 

And mark, Paul, in Heb. ix., in referring to the " divers bap- 
tisms " practised by the Hebrews, and especially as practised by 
Moses, their great law-giver, cites us to the very first instance 
of baptism as recorded in the Old Testament. (See Ex. xxiv.) 
Here Moses first declares God's words : " Moses came and told 
the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments : " 
and the people vowed obedience and allegiance ; just as is now 
done on professing faith in Christ. (See vs. 3 and 6.) 

"And all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words which 
the Lord hath said we will do ! " Do our modern candidates for church mem- 
bership do more than this? v. 6: "And Moses took half of the blood" (i. e. 
of the oxen; see v. 5), "and put it in basins; and half of the blood he 
sprinkled on the altar; " vs. 7 and 8: "And he took the book of the covenant, 
and read in the audience of the people; " (just as our churches do.) "And 
they said, All that the Lord hath said we will do, and be obedient." 

"And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold 
the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all 
these words." 

So in Heb. ix. 19. 

: " When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people, according to the 
law, .... he sprinkled both the book and all the people." 



62 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

This sprinkling of the book and the people was, therefore, 
the first of the " divers baptisms " alluded to in Heb. ix. 10, 
"which, however, did not make those that did the service 
" perfect as pertaining to the conscience." 

In Ex. xxix. and xxx., we have the first prescriptive law for 
baptisms in any form (and also for the holy anointing or 
chrism), which baptisms were first appointed for the priests, 
and afterward, in various forms, extended to all the people. 
(See Ex. xxix. 4, 12, 16, 21.) 

"And Aaron, and his sons, thou shalt bring unto the door of the tabernacle 
of the congregation, and sbalt wash them with water." (Compare with Mark 
vii. 8, quoted above.) Verse 12: "And thou shalt take of the blood of 
the bullock, and put it upon the horns of the altar with thy finger, and pour 
all the blood beside the bottom of the altar." Verse 18 : "And thou shalt slay 
the ram, and thou shall take his blood and sprinkle it round about upon the 
altar." Verse 21: "And thou shalt take of the blood that is upon the altar, 
and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron, and upon his garments, 
and upon his sons, and upon the garments of his sons with him : and he shall be 
hallowed, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments with him." 

(See also ch. xxx. 17-21.) 

" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Thou shalt make a laver of brass, 
and his foot also of brass, to wash withal j and thou shalt put it between the 
tabernacle of the congregation and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein. 
For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat. When 
they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that 
they die not ,• or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offerings 
made by fire unto the Lord : so shall they wash their hands and their feet, that 
they die not; and it shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his 
seed throughout their generations." 

Thus, in the 29th chapter of Exodus, we have the prescrip- 
tion for the baptism into the priesthood, by Moses, the founder 
of the tabernacle service, and in chap, xxx., the law for the 
self-baptism of Aaron and his sons while engaged in the tem- 
ple service. The latter part of the 30th chapter of Exodus 
gives instructions for preparing the holy anointing oil, alluded 
to more than once in the New Testament, and which was a type 
of that "unction from the Holy One," or "anointing" which 
the Apostle John speaks of in the 2nd chapter of his first 
epistle, and synonymous with the baptism of the Holy Ghost; 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 63 

see 1 John ii. 20, 27 : " But ye have an unction from the 
Holy One. . . . But the anointing which ye have received of 
Him abideth in you." The above, with the context of the 
passages cited, is all the law on the subject of baptisms and 
purifyings found in Exodus. 

In Leviticus xi., xii., xiii., xiv. and xv., are various laws for 
purification, which Paul refers to in Heb. ix., and which, as 
Robinson says of the heathen nations (that they all had bap- 
tismal purifyings), so more especially did the Hebrews, as we 
thus find. The law for the purifying from unclean beasts ; for 
the purifying of women after childbirth ; for the purifying of 
lepers, or those who had touched them ; and for the purifying of 
those afflicted with issues, and those who touched them ; and 
those who had touched a dead body, is recorded in these 
chapters. 

In Leviticus xvi., is the law of atonement, which also re- 
quired different baptisms for cleansing. (See vs. 4, 14, 15, 16, 
18, 19, 24.) 

" He (Aaron) shall put on the holy linen coat .... and with the linen mitre 
shall he be attired ; these are holy garments, thei-efore shall he wash his flesh in 

water, and so put them on And he shall take of the blood of the bullock, 

and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy seat eastward, and before the 
mercy seat shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times. . . And he 
shall sprinkle of the blood upon the (altar) with his finger seven times, and 
cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel." See 
Heb. ix. 21, 22. " Then shall he kill the goat of the sin-offering, that is for the 
people, and bring his blood within the vail .... and sprinkle it upon the 
mercy seat, and before the mercy seat. And he shall make an atonement for 
the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel ; and be- 
cause of their transgressions in all their sins. 24th: " And he shall wash 
his flesh with water in the holy place, and put on his garments and come forth 
and offer his burnt-offering and the burnt-offering of the people, and make an 
atonement for himself and for the people ! " * 

*Dr. Wall quotes Ex. xix. 10, and Num. xv. 14, 15, as passages that all 
the Jews recognize as requiring baptism, of Jews and of strangers. So all 
passages requiring them to be clean when they eat the Passover or worship be- 
fore Jehovah, as Gen. xxxv. 2, and Lev. xi. 25, 28, 40; xiv. 8, 47; Num. 
xix. 10, 21 j xxxi. 24. 

The Jews affirm that the command " Be clean and wash your garments," 



64 EITUALISM DETHKONED. 

Thus have we gone through the Mosaic law of baptisms, for 
purifying; and, be it remembered, that Paul, in Heb. ix. 
must have alluded to these, for he could have alluded to 
none other, for no law of Moses marks out any. other. And 
these purifyings (baptisms) might all be self-administered, 
save those consecrating the priests to their work. These re- 
quired a canonical succession of administration, yet was this 
rule oft violated by Israel and Judah's kings, in later ages, 
who " took of the lowest of the people," for priests, because of 
the defection of the Levitical priesthood, or the contempt these 
kings would show to the Aaronic line.* In these last cita- 
tions, of sprinklings for atonement and washing with water, 
we discern the purport of the frequent language of the New 
Testament, connecting baptism with the remission of sins. 
"Arise and be baptized," says Ananias to Paul, "and wash 
away thy sins." Such was the typical mode of cleansing in 
all the Jewish Dispensation ; and Ananias had not yet escaped 
from Judaism. So Aaron and his sons were to wash their 

means "purify (baptize) yourselves." They assert that circumcision was given 
in Egypt (see Ex. xii. 4S), and sacrifice and baptism in the wilderness. So the 
Talmud says : " Israel does not enter into covenant but by these three things, 
circumcision, baptism and a peace offering; and all proselytes in like manner, 
one law shall be for all." 

So Cyprian (a ritualist), seeking to engraft water-baptism on the Christian 
Church, says, " The Jews had already, and a very long time ago, the baptism 
of the law and of Moses, and were now to be baptized in the name of Jesus 
Christ." From viewing Christ as the greater, came the conceit also, that 
John's baptism was not sufficient, but those baptized unto (or by) John must 
also be baptized unto Jesus Christ (see Acts xix. 1-7). So Basil compares 
the baptisms of Moses, of John, and of Christ. " The baptism of Moses," 
Basil says, " required sacrifices to be joined with it; " and days of separation — 
the baptism of John had none of these incumbrances, yet was it far tran- 
scended by the baptism of Christ ; " For," he says in another place, " they {i. e. 
the Arians), baptized with water, but Christ baptized with the Spirit." 

* So their Passovers were observed by each family without intervention of 
priests ; every man was a " king and priest" before God in the first founding of 
the Israelitish Theocracy. No prestige, power or patronage was given to the 
Jewish priesthood as special administrators of rites; either of circumcision, 
baptism or Passover. The priest had no monopoly of these. 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 65 

hands and their feet at the laver of brass. In Christ's day 
this custom of washing the feet was extended to others than, 
the priests, and that with Christ's approval, as a token of hu- 
mility : see John xiii. But it has never been considered an 
ordinance of the New Dispensation ; yet it was an "ordinance" 
of the Old Dispensation. It was one of the " divers baptisms." 
And mark, these baptisms were few if any of them dippings; 
they were either washings with the hand (with the pugme, fist, 
as it reads in the original of Mark vii. 3) ; or sprinklings and 
affusions.* When Moses purified the people, he "took the 
blood of calves and of goats, with water ;" and using scarlet 
wool (i. e., wool purified with blood), and hyssop branches, "he 
sprinkled both the book and all the people :" see Heb. ix. 
19. Moses in purifying Aaron and his sons dipped the tip of 
his finger in the purifying element (as Pedo-Baptists now do), 
and applied it to the recipient of baptism, as directed in 
Ex. xxix. 20, 21. The whole process is most specifically 
defined by Moses in his instructions on the subject, thus being 
totally the reverse of the New Testament indefiniteness on the 
subject. When the priests or others baptized themselves, 
they of course did as we do, and, as Mark says the Jews did, 
taking one hand, or both, to apply the water to the part to be 
purified. So the Mahometans, the one sect washing upward 
to the elbow, and the other washing downward from the 
elbow, each dipping only the hand, and applying the lifted 
water to the part to be cleansed. Yet both the dipping and 

* Baptizn is found but twice in the Septuagint (only gradually did it take 
i f s place as a synonym of katharizo — to purify), viz : in 2 Kings v. 4, and 
Isainh xxi. 4. In the first of these instances it is most manifestly used in 
the sense to purify — to be cleansed from leprosy; and in the second place 
(Lsaiah xxi. 4), evidently refers to an inundation or whelming with fear. 

liapto is found eighteen times in the Old Testament ; and perhaps in every 
instance in connection with the Jewish purifyings, and is correctly translated 
dip. which clipping is of something used in purifying (baptizing) ; but in no 
i stance refers to the object baptized, but to apart of the process — as a dip- 
ping of the finger in water to sprinkle (or purify) another object; see Exodus, 
xii. 22 : Leviticus iv. 17 ; and xiv. 14-18. 



66 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

the affusion, as we know, will cleanse the flesh. And the flesh 
is all that is cleansed by the ritual baptisms. When God 
purifies (baptizes) by the Spirit, He pours it from on high. 

Pretensions of the Baptists. 

We cannot well refrain from noticing here the arrogant 
pretensions of the Baptists and their defence of restricted 
communion on the ground of having with them the whole 
truth on the subject of baptism. Alluding to a Baptist 
author, who had (as he claimed) demonstrated that immersion 
alone was baptism, the American Baptist discourses thus : 

" It is well that we should have these defences of our faith for the silencing 
of cavillers, and yet we have often thought that such a multiplicity of labor to 
prove that immersion alone is baptism, was only wasting powder. The fact is, 
that so far as reason and argument can settle any question, this question has 
been settled long ago. It is a question no longer. No man, with any degree 
of sincerity and candor, can read the works that have been written without 
seeing that it is what Professor Stuart pronounced it, ' a case made out.' In 
the early part of this controversy, when the whole subject was overspread with 
the dust and traditions of Popery, light was needed, and men entered into the 
discussion on both sides, with the sincere desire of obtaining that light. Pedo- 
Baptist ministers buckled on their armor in defence of a time-honored practice, 
and in cases too numerous to be mentioned, were not ashamed, on discovering 
their error, to confess it, and become the champions of a creed they had 
opposed. But that day has gone by. There is no such spirit of honest inquiry 
now. We cannot expect to convert the world to Baptist sentiments by proving 
that they are true. People of the present generation are not influenced by 
argument. They go by instinct; they are moved by passion, by prejudice, 
by a thousand subtle influences of which they themselves are scarcely sensible. 
Where shall we find the community that worships truth alone, and conse- 
quently is impressible by reason and argument? We must, therefore, meet 
this baptismal question in some other way, if we wish to convert the Christian 
Avorld to what we believe to be the primitive practice. We must adapt our- 
selves to the different phases of mind we would influence. We must go back 
to the simple question of facts, and address ourselves to the underlying ob- 
stacles which prevent those facts from having their legitimate influence. 

" We must not forget that our opponents are of two distinct classes. In the 
first, there is a disregard of principle that renders effort useless. We can do 
nothing with a man who has no innate love for truth, such as would lead him 
to make all sacrifices for its upholding. We might as well beat the air as to 
combat opponents of this stamp. There is a prior work to be done with them. 
The religious foundation itself is to be laid." 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 67 

So some of us are not Baptists, because we are so un candid and 
untruth-loving that we will not listen to the arguments that have 
so oft demonstrated to Baptist understandings that immersion 
in water alone is baptism — a point so clear to them that they 
can scarcely stretch their charity so far as to see how any honest 
inquirer after truth can deny it — and even so clear that an 
eminent Pedo-Baptist professor is constrained to admit that it 
is a "case made out!" They, therefore, find in our caprices 
and prejudices, with the bias of a false education, and " a 
thousand subtle influences," the ground of our dereliction 
from the peculiar Baptist tenets. 

They, therefore, deeply feel the need of our change of heart. 
Alas, for the slow-rolling wheels of progress toward the con- 
version of Christendom to Baptist sentiment ! 

If, however, this Baptist critic had reversed his artillery, 
and assured all the world that it is vain to attempt to convert 
the Baptists from their ritualistic bondage and worship, by 
showing that the most of their teachings on the subject are 
intrinsically false and only assumed — contradicting, as they 
do, the history of the origin of baptisms, and its nature — he 
would have come much nearer the truth, and might have done 
his Baptist brethren some good. 

In former numbers of the Church Union we have presented 
the admissions of the American Baptist upon these two points, 
viz. : In the first place, admitting that the last dispensation 
of God's kingdom here is to know no ritual law, which last 
dispensation it would be difficult for any to show is not the 
present; and second, that there is no New Testament law 
placing communion as the sequel to baptism. Nevertheless, 
the Baptists hold the (so-called) sacraments in strict abeyance 
to a denominational interest, sacrificing all that is dear and 
precious in Christian fellowship thereto. 

Let us, however, premise that both the severe strictures quoted 
above and the admissions were occasioned by the pressure of a 
growing demand among the laity of the Baptist Church for open 
communion, which demand is not lessened by the roar all the 



68 EITUALISM DETHEOXED. 

way across the Atlantic, as of many waters, and of mighty 
thunderings, from the great mass of Baptist churches there, 
with Spurgeon, Noel, Carson, and Kobert Hall at their head, 
demanding that the Baptist Church in America shall imitate 
the Baptists in England in granting unrestricted fellowship 
and communion-fellowship with their fellow-Christians of all 
the evangelical denominations. Instead of listening to these 
demands, however, the Baptist editors, ministers and leaders 
here have been assiduously endeavoring to divert the atten- 
tion of the Baptists of America from this pressure by a 
fiercer cry against other denominations, because they will not 
at this juncture give up their conscientious and as evidently 
Scriptural views of baptism, and adopt those of the Baptist 
Church. 

They seem disposed to raise the loudest clamor upon this 
point, as they are manifestly about being compelled to suc- 
cumb to the force of a liberalizing public sentiment, and a 
conscience enlightened by more consistent interpretations of 
the word of God on the subject of rituals, opening the way for 
a more expanded Christian charity. This outcry for a de- 
nominational badge and watchword at this juncture, and the 
effort to "strengthen the stakes" (if not to lengthen the cords) 
of sectarian exclusiveness, may well be resembled to an effort 
which we may suppose certain Jewish priests, at the dawn of 
Christ's day, may have made to proselyte all other Jews to a 
certain mode or peculiarity of performing the rite of circum- 
cision — prescribing that it be done with certain consecrated 
instruments, and by certain canonical administrators — whom 
they, par excellence, should name, that the work might all be 
in their hands — not foreseeing, except by an inward premoni- 
tion, perhaps, how soon the breath of God, through His Son 
Jesus Christ, would sweep the whole away. 

What the Baptists have assumed. 

The arguments not only of Baptists, but all other ritualists, 
who deem themselves under a law of water baptism, have 



ORIGIN AXD IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 69 

been pure assumptions. We have seen that baptisms were 
not introduced even in the Old Testament record at first in 
the form of a law, but as a historic record of what Moses did 
in purifying the people, and also Aaron and his sons, and in- 
troducing the priesthood and temple service. Afterward this 
whole service was regulated by law, the baptisms among the 
rest. Well, in the New Testament these same baptisms, if 
any of a ceremonial kind, are introduced in the same manner 
in the record of John, and some of the disciples of Christ, be- 
fore the Great Commission given by our Saviour just prior to 
his ascension, afforded the Christian Church what it now 
claims as a law for baptisms. John, the forerunner of Christ, 
came in the wilderness of Judea, typically purifying and pre- 
paring a people unto the coming of the Messiah. This he 
himself declares. See Matthew 3rd chapter: "In those 
days came John the Purifier" (Baptist is the word in our 
version, which is neither the Greek word anglicized nor trans- 
lated). The word "Baptistes" as in Greek, if anglicized, 
would be Baptizer, and if translated as Drs. E. Beecher and 
Dale have abundantly shown, would be Purifier. Not that 
the word Baptizo (Greek) has no other sense than purify, but 
it has this sense when used in connection with the Jewish 
ceremonial law. 

The Baptists are Witnesses. 

The Baptists will attest this, for this sense of the word is 
too common and too palpable to be gainsayed. 

We have already quoted Dr. Robinson's testimony on the 
subject; but the testimony of Dr.' Con ant, the great champion 
of, and chief worker in the American Bible Union — an asso- 
ciation whose specific work has been to give the world a 
translation, or version of the Bible, with the word Baptizo 
translated immerse — is still more to the point. In his work 
eutitled " Baptizein" which form of the verb is the Greek In- 
finitive of Baptizo ; by numerous quotations from the Chris- 
tian Fathers, and interlocutory comments of his own, he has 



70 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

shown how commonly the purifyings of the ancient Hebrews 
were, by these Fathers, called baptisms. On p. 122 he says : 

" The idea of cleansing, associated with the Christian rite of immersion in 
water, naturally suggested comparison with the Jewish rites of purification, 
especially by water : hence, the Christian Fathers treat these ritual purifica- 
tions as types foreshadowing the grace to be imparted through the Christian 
rite." 

On p. 126 he quotes John of Damascus as saying: 

" He (Christ) is baptized, not as himself needing cleansing, but appropriat- 
ing my cleansing, that He may whelm sin and bury all the old Adam in the 
water. " 

Discoursing on Baptism, he (John) says again : 

" By water every one unclean, according to the law, is cleansed, even the 
garments themselves being washed with water. . . . And almost all things, 
according to the law, are cleansed with water." 

So, on p. 129, Dr. C. himself says : 

"From the idea of cleansing associated with immersion in water, they call 
Christ's expiatory death a baptism, not only as an expression of overwhelming 
suffering, but also because by it He cleansed from sin." 

So he quotes Chrysostom as calling it " a baptism; because 
by it he cleansed the world." So he calls martyrdom (p. 130) 
" a baptism by blood," ascribing to it " the same cleansing 
efficacy as to literal immersion in water." On p. 132, he 
quotes Athanasius as teaching thus : 

" Three immersions (baptisms), purgative of all sin whatever, God hag 
bestowed on the nature of man : I mean that of water; and again, that by the 
witness of one's own blood ; and, thirdly, that by tears, in which, also, the har- 
lot was cleansed." 

Now we have cited the above, (as we might many more 
from the same work,) not as proving the writer's assumption 
of immersion as the meaning of baptism ; nor, that in order for 
baptism to be ritually performed, there must be three immer- 
sions of the same candidate, as Athanasius and the early 
Christians required ; nor, that the baptism by tears or sufferings 
and martyrdom were immersions at all, or with water at all, 
but to show that in their view all these baptisms of the Jews 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 71 

and of a later time, by ivater, by blood, by sufferings and tears, 
were purifications, as all these writers admit. This substan- 
tiates our position, and is the point at which we here aim. 

Meaning of the word " Baptisma" and its Cognates. 

Dr. J. W. Dale's recent work on "Baptism" (3 vols., with a 
fourth prepared, but not issued) presents the most exhaustive 
treatise (or treatises) on the philology and etymology of the 
word yet furnished by any writer — more complete than is fur- 
nished by all other writers combined. This is affirmed with- 
out fear of question on the part of any who will examine his 
work. 

In his treatise on "Classic Baptism" (the first in the series), 
his investigations have resulted in the conclusion thus an- 
nounced : — p. 354 : 

" The master-key to the interpretation of Baptizo is condition, — condition 
characterized by completeness, with or without physical envelopment. What- 
ever IS CAPABLE OP THOROUGHLY CHANGING THE CHARACTER, STATE OR CON- 
DITION OP ANY OBJECT IS CAPABLE OP BAPTIZING THAT OBJECT J AND BY SUCH 
CHANGE OF CHARACTER, STATE OR CONDITION DOES IN FACT BAPTIZE IT." 

And Dr. Dale further states : 

u There is no form of act inherent in Baptizo. The conception that any word 
expressive of condition can be self-limited as to the form of the act or agency 
effecting such condition, is an error." 

He further states : 

* Baptism is a myriad-sided word, adjusting itself to the most diverse cases. 
It has no form of act of its own; it asks for none; it accepts, indifferently, of 
any, of all, competent to meet its demand — change of condition. It demands a 
complete change of condition, physical, intellectual, moral, or ceremonial; 
and accepts of any agency, physical or spiritual, competent to the task. Con- 
troversy (in the past) has set toward the proof or disproof of certain acts — to 
dip, to plunge, on one side; to sprinkle, to pour, on the other. The controversy 
has proved to be both unsatisfactory and interminable.* It would continue to 
be so if prolonged through three thousand years instead of three hundred." 

#Aye, not only interminable, but in its worthlessness "a horrible disgrace to 
the Christian Church," as the Bnptist minister in New York city said — 
because all others had not adopted his immersion views! 



72 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

It is only about three hundred years since the question of 
mode has been controverted by the churches. Dr. D. has thus 
demonstrated, by philological induction, through an almost 
exhaustive examination of the ancient Greek writers, — which 
philological investigation must hold the empire even over the 
lexicons, for only by such philological research are lexicons 
made — that neither is Baptizo a word of mode, nor a word con- 
fined in its scope and use to secular, earthly or material 
things ; that the agency, element or mode is not known by the 
simple use of the word itself, but that it expresses condition, 
which may be the result of a " myriad" different agencies, modes 
of action, and receiving or effecting elements.* 

He says "Bapto" the root whence Baptizo comes, signifies, 
primarily, to dip, and hence, logically, to dye, stain, tinge, or 
color, as derived senses of the word. And if this word were 
used relative to religious things at all, (as it is not,) it must 
take the logically derived sense, i. e., a change of character, a 
new color or hue given to the character. Baptizo, its derivative 
and intensive, is applied to moral and spiritual things, almost 
times without number ; and philology shows that it is thus 

* In " Classic Baptism," Dr. D. has traced the word Baptismos and its cog- 
nates to the causative agencies (and modes of action of course), suggested by 
the following record among others not here specified. See Johannic Bap. 
237. 1. Baptism of wine, a drunken condition. 2. Baptism of war, a 
desolated condition. 3. Baptism of care, an anxious condition. 4. Baptism 
of trouble, a harassed condition. 5. Baptism of passion, an excited condition. 
6. Baptism of grief, a sorrowful condition. 7. Baptism of ignorance, an un- 
enlightened condition. 8. Baptism of wickedness, a depraved condition. 
9. Baptism of taxes, an oppressed condition. 10. Baptism of debts, a bank- 
rupt condition. 11. Baptism of mental labor, an imbecile condition. 12. Bap- 
tism of questions, a bewildered condition. 13. Baptism of disease, a sickly 
condition* 14. Baptism of Magian arts, a superstitious condition. 15. Bap- 
tism of poverty, an impoverished condition. 16. Baptism of a drug, a somno- 
lent condition. 17. Baptism of pleasure, a joyous condition. 18. Baptism of 
fright, an alarmed condition. 19. Baptism of surprise, a startled condition. 
20. Baptism of heifer ashes, a ceremonially pure condition. 21. Baptism of 
mersion or submerging, a whelmed condition. — Twenty examples against one 
(the latter), in favor of a variety of meanings, and of non-physical as well as 
physical applications of the word. 



OKIGIN AND IMPOST OF BAPTISM. 73 

used with reference to a permanent change of moral character 
or condition. The terminus ad quern of the word never desig- 
nates a mode of doing this, or the agency, but the result, the 
changed condition, — whether it be imbued, purified, regenerated, 
consecrated to, merged into, etc., etc., or other resultant and 
abiding condition of the soul or mind. The Greek dative of 
agency (by or with), either expressed by the force of the 
dative itself, or by a preposition with the accusative, of ter- 
mination or result, is usually the grammatical relation of 
Baptizo in all Greek sentences. This dative agency may be the 
Holy Spirit, fire, flood, water, blood, ashes, tears, sufferings, 
martyrdom, a flaming sword, a sea, a cloud, wine, dew, etc., 
etc. ; and is found nearly as oft used where w T ater is not, and 
cannot be a concomitant or element or agent, as where it is. 

In all moral and religious uses of the word, Br. D. shows 
that no water is to be inferred from the use of the word, unless 
water be specified directly or in the context. He also shows 
that the intent or meaning of the word never terminates on the 
use of water — that there is not in all the Greek language any 
such expression as baptizing into water — but even if water be 
used, or is implied, it is only as the means of securing an- 
other result, viz. a {purified) state or condition — a whelmed 
state, — a mersed or merged state, etc. Judaic Baptism, he 
assures us, was a symbolic purifying by water, or ashes, or 
blood, as required in the Mosaic law, and rehearsed He- 
brews 9th; while John's Baptism was more, a baptism into 
repentance itself, of which the use of water might be a sign, 
but was not the real baptism. John's commission was to 
preach the baptism, i. e., the doctrine or duty of repentance — 
and he really performed his work had he never baptized (or 
purified) with water at all. God's command did not rest on 
the sign, but on the terminal object of his commission, repent- 
ance — the "baptism of repentance" Of the Greek words Bap- 
tisma metanoias, correctly rendered baptism of repentance, he 
assures us that the former word — 

" 1. Is never met with in the classics. 2. Its use originates in the Scriptures, 



74 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

in which it is never used with a physical defining adjunct. 3. It is never em- 
ployed in Patristic writings to denote a simple physical mersion, but a con- 
trolling moral influence." See Johannic Bap., p. 239. 

Dr. D. further asserts that the Baptist new version of this 
phrase, " immersion of repentance," is without meaning, or if 
taken as elliptical and paraphrased, as they are wont, it evis- 
cerates and annuls the force of Scripture language. 

It is not, he says, a baptism which makes a mere "profes- 
sion of repentance," but a baptism of repentance, that secures 
the remission of sins. " Immersion in water," says Dr. D., 
"expresses only the condition of an object resting in repose in 
the water." Is it meant that John preached that "men and 
women" must occupy such a condition? Certainly that is 
most heroic doctrine ! And what of " repentance?" 

" This also is eviscerated of its life, and we convert the repentance of inspi- 
ration into ^profession of repentance. And what of 'remission of sins?' The 
immersion of 'men and women' in water making 'profession' of repentance, 
never reaches unto 'remission of sins,' — that is Campbellism — but true soul- 
repentance will avail unto the 'remission of sins.' " 

Dr. D. hints that— 

" Some would shrink from contradicting John by making that baptism out- 
ward which he declares is inward and soul-renewing, and would shrink from 
transforming Baptisma into an immersion in which there is no immersion, but 
only an evanescent dipping, which divorces Baptisma from metanoias, and 
establishes an unlawful union with water; which takes away metanoias and 
gives us in its stead an empty 'profession;' which denies thus what John 
affirms, and treads down every word of this Scripture by a mangled rending 
of its members from their living relations." 

He adds : 

" I am disposed to gather up the torn fragments that they may be restored 
to their divinely appointed relations, and to accept of them, just as the Holy 
Spirit has given them, without any attempt at rewriting in order to make 
them square with a theory." 

And there are Baptist writers, not a few, who candidly ad- 
mit what Dr. D. claims, and thus give these words respecting 
John's baptism their full force. Says Professor Ripley, an 
eminent Baptist commentator, (on Acts xviii. 25) : 

" The Baptism of John is here put for all the ministry of John the Baptist, 
and all the doctrine he taught. . . . We received the doctrine which John the 
Baptist taught." 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 75 

So Professor Hackett on same passage, says : 

" Knowing only the baptism of John . . . since John, however, taught that 
the Saviour was about to appear, and that repentance, faith in Him, and holi- 
ness were necessary to salvation . . . Apollos could be said, with entire truth, 
to be instructed in the way of the Lord." 

The Christian Standard (Baptist), also says : 

"This phrase, 'Baptism of John,' is to be taken for the doctrine of this 
great herald of Jesus." 

John's heal Baptism not Water-baptism — Dr. Dale's 

View. 

Discoursing further on the phrase Baptisma metanoias, as 
defining John's baptism, Dr. D. remarks : 

"If 'faith' and 'sin' can produce such changed conditions of the soul as 
are denoted by ' righteousness, ' (' righteousness of faith,') on the one hand* 
and 'deceit,' ('deceitfulness of sin,') on the other, there can be no embarrass- 
ment in attributing to 'repentance' the office of changing the condition of the 
soul in that thorough manner indicated by Baptisma." 

And the subjective genitive in Greek, he insists, lawfully 
defines its connected noun. Thus we have baptisma puros, 
baptism of fire ; baptisma aimatos, baptism of blood ; baptisma 
dakroun, baptism of tears ; baptisma marturon, baptism of mar- 
tyrdom, etc. So we have "lavacrum fidei, the washing of 
faith ; lavacrum penitentice, the washing of repentance. In 
all these, he says : 

u The genitive adjunct defines and establishes the baptism or washing; and 
in no instance is the baptism or washing within a physical element. The 
reference is only to a condition of the soul." 

But Dr. D. pertinently inquires : 

" Does any one in alarm ask, ' Do you mean to deny that water was used by 
John in administering baptism ?' I mean (he says) to deny just what the 
word of God denies ; and to affirm just what the word of God affirms. I mean 
to be very jealous for that, excellent glory claimed by our Baptist brethren, of 
sternly adhering to the very word of God; and, therefore, to follow very hum- 
bly and very adoringly (as otherwise knowing nothing) the very words which 
the Holy Ghost, teacheth. And in doing so I mean to distinguish just so much 
and no more as the Holy Spirit distinguishes between the baptism which 
John preached, in which there was no water, and the ritual baptism which 
John administered in which there was water. John's mission did not consist 



76 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

in the administration of a ritual ordinance, . . . John was not sent to admin- 
ister a ritual water-baptism, but was sent to preach repentance baptism, just 
as Paul 'was not sent to baptize, but to preach the gospel' (1 Cor. i. 17). The 
phrase ' Baptisma metanoias,' means nothing more nor less than a pervading 
and controlling penitential condition of the soul. This was what John was 
commissioned to preach, and this was what he did preach, Mark, Luke, Peter, 
find Paul being witnesses. He both denies that he was sent to administer 
water-baptism, as his ministry, and affirms that his mission was to preach 
repentance baptism, when he refuses water-baptism to the Pharisee and Sad- 
ducee, and calls them to repentance baptism, to be evidenced by its appro- 
priate fruits." 

This last remark of Dr. Dale is a sufficient reply to his 
own concession in one place, that — 

'• John's mission did include the administration of a rite, in which water, as 
a symbol, appeared, illustrative of and lending force to that repentance baptism, 
in the preaching of which (water not entering into -it) his mission did so pre- 
eminently consist, that it is even used by the Holy Spirit to characterize it." 

John's purifying with water was simply a continuation of the 
office of the Levite, or Jewish priest. Bating this slight conces- 
sion to ritualistic teachers, Dr. D. reasons otherwise correctly.* 

* Indeed Dr. D. on another page recognizes the Levitical character of John's 
ministry and external baptism ; thus, p. 275: ''Water, then, may appear in 
John's ritual baptism as fulfilling an office which such ritual baptism demands, 
and which (as in the record) reads, ' I indeed baptize you with water,' — en 
liudati eis metanoian. The exigency of the case (as a Jewish priest) requires 
the presence of water as a symbol agency. Water has a symbol power; it can 
symbolize the purifying nature of ' repentance,' and the purified condition 
consequent upon remission of sins, and the purifying power of the atoning 
* blood of the Lamb,' but it cannot give repentance nor remit sins." He also 
quotes Professor J. H. Goodwin, " Notes on Mark," (London, 1869,) who 
says: "John was both a prophet and a priest. As prophet he preached, and 
as priest he used a rite of purification similar to those used by the priests. 
All purifications with water, and all in which one person acted on another 
were by sprinkling or affusion. These, and only these were appointed by the 
law, and were called baptisms (Heb. ix. 10). The same term which is used 
for the rite is also used for the reality of which it is an emblem. As there was 
a circumcision of the body, so there was a circumcision of the mind. The 
baptism which was the subject of John's preaching, and which was for the 
remission of sins, was that of the mind. Justin Martyr speaks of the cleans- 
ing of repentance, and of the knowledge of God, and declares this to be the 
only baptism which can purify the person. And he asks, 'Of what use is 
that baptism which cleanses the flesh and the body only?'" 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 77 

Matthew (iii. 1-12) most abundantly confirms Dr. D.'s po- 
sition respecting the real mission of John : 

u In those days caine John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of 
Judea, and saying, Repent ye." 

He did not preach saying, " Be baptized in water." Till 
Christ's post-resurrection appearance on Olivet, no claim is 
made by any one that a command for ritual baptism is found 
in the New Testament, and we shall allow Dr. Dale and other 
" able ministers of the New Testament " to deal with that final 
commission of our ascending Lord. 

Here we wish to hear Dr. D. a little further respecting 
John's baptism. On p. 252 (" Johannic Baptism"), he writes.: 

"Whether Mark and Luke unite in stating merely the fact of John's preach- 
ing, or Mark be accepted as stating both the fact of John's ritually baptizing, 
and also preaching the ' baptism of repentance into the remission of sins,' 
we have a broad distinction made, tacitly in the one case, and expressly in the 
other, between the preaching and baptizing. That John did ritually baptize 
is unquestionable. That his oral addresses consisted in the proclamation of a 
ritual baptism, and a call upon the people to receive such baptism, is (in view of 
the nature of his mission) a simple absurdity. But all inspired writers unite 
in testifying that the grand feature of John's ministry was the preaching a 
baptism ; that baptism, then, could not have been a water-baptism, but must 
have been, as we are expressly told, a repentance baptism." 

Now hear Dr. D.'s concession to ritualistic teaching again, 
which, however, he himself refutes every time ; p. 253 : 

"There is a ritual baptism pertaining to Christianity, but, whatever the 
theory may teach upon the matter, neither Paul, nor any other minister of 
Christ, was ever sent to preach a ritual baptism. The Christian commission is 
to preach Christ and his baptism (who never baptized with water) .... and 
the man of whose ministry it can be justly said, his preaching is the preaching 
of a ritual ordinance, cannot be one of those whom Christ has sent to preach 
the gospel." 

Now on what authority does Dr. D. assert that " there is 
a ritual baptism pertaining to Christianity?" yet, which 
" no minister of Christ was ever sent to preach ? " Has he 
cited us to any law for it ? Nay, nor will he ! He finds a 
ritual baptism existing among Christians, and that is all the 



78 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

law there is to be found. We shall yet have his own testi- 
mony further to this ; p. 253 : 

"Inasmuch as the ministry of the Forerunner is evermore described as the 
preaching of the ' baptism of repentance,' the ' baptism of repentance into 
the remission of sins,' it follows just as certainly, as that there was no ab- 
surdly incongruous relationship between the preaching of John and the pre- 
paration of the way of the Lord, that ritual baptism was not the theme of the 
preaching of him who was ' filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's 
womb,' and who entered upon his work ' in the spirit and power of Elias/ 
to ' prepare the way of the Lord, and to give the knowledge of salvation unto 
his people.'" 

Analyzing the " New Version " translation of this passage, 
issued by the Baptist Union, which is as follows : " preaching 
the immersion of repentance unto the remission of sins," and 
Mr. Campbell's version, " immersion in water into the remis- 
sion of sins," Dr. D. remarks : 

" The translation of eis in connection with immersion by unto is something 
remarkable for Baptists. There is not a single case outside the Scriptures in 
which, in such relation, they translate eis by ' unto,' The proper translation, 
as shown by the character of the Greek verb, is into. Up to this point the 
Baptist theory has insisted on this in the most imperative manner. This 
principle has not been disregarded here, and their universal practice discarded 
without some strong reason. What that strong reason is, is sufficiently obvious. 
A translation here, in harmony with their translation of the preposition, in 
every case of classic baptism, would cut up their theory (of water-baptism) by 
the roots. Our translation of the preposition, even with their i immersion/ 
makes an end of their theory. Try it : ' He preached the immersion of re- 
pentance into the remission of sins.' Then the ' immersion ' is not into water, 
but into the 'remission of sins/ and of necessity the baptism cannot be physi- 
cal. ' Into the remission of sins/ states a truth under a proper interpretation 
of 'baptism of repentance/ but 'immersion (in water) unto the remission of 
sins/ states, on its face, an untruth, ruinous to the Gospel, and to the soul that 
confides in it." 

But Dr. D. apologizes for the Baptist translation of eis 
" unto " in this case only — in connection with baptism — by 
attributing it not to a design of perverting the Word of God ; 
but to the pressure of their mistaken conception of the mean- 
ing of baptizo ; he says : 

"When they came to this passage they reasoned thus : ' Baptismos must be 
translated immersion, but if we translate eis, as we have always insisted it 



OEIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 79 

should be translated, into, we take away icater from our " immersion " by giving 
to it a purely ideal element, which would ruin our doctrine ; ' and as our doctrine 
cannot be wrong, eis here cannot mean into, therefore, we are justified in trans- 
lating it unto. And it will be better to confront the self-contradiction in our 
translations than to abandon a baptism into water for a baptism into remis- 
sion of SINS." 

\Ve will not take the space to continue Dr. D.'s scathing 
analysis of the Baptist translation here, and the reason for it, 
and also Mr. Campbell's doubling the preposition and interpo- 
lating water in order to get his ritualism into the text ; but 
press directly to Dr. Dale's summing up of the argument, or 
rather his announcement of the conclusion : 

** I say, then, that Baptisms metanoias eis aphesin amartion is a complete 
statement needing no addition, and that it is" the fullest and most vividly 
distinct statement of the distinguishing characteristics of John's preaching to 
be found anywhere in the Scriptures. The meaning of baptisma has been suffi- 
ciently established, both philologicaily and by usage. There is not a particle 
of evidence that it does ever, in the Scriptures, enter into physical relations. 
And so far as my examination goes, it is never used in physics out of the Scrip- 
tures."* 

What now is the sentiment of the whole ? "John preached the baptism of 
repentance into the remission of sins, — i. e., John preached a thorough change 
in the condition of the soul to he effected by repentance, and to be accompanied 
by the forgiveness of sins, pointing out the Coming One, already in their midst, 
exclaiming: ' Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.' 

" Is this preaching so unsound, or so unintelligible, that it must be converted 
into water dipping before it can be received f " 

We say Amen to this reasoning of Dr. D. 

Hear Dr. Dale's Conclusions. 

" Johannic baptism is a spiritual condition of the soul, a 'baptism into repen- 
tance,' ' into the remission of sins,' which condition of repentance and of re- 
mission (is not momentary), has no self-termination, and is the work of the 
Holy Ghost. This is Johannic baptism in its reality. 

" This same baptism .... exhibited in symbol by the application of pure 
water to the persons in a ritual ordinance, is Johannic baptism in its shadow. 



* Baptismos is the word used by religious and secular writers where physical 
purifying is intended. 



80 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

John's (real) baptism is a new baptism. ' Baptism into repentance/ and 
' baptism into water/ are, as to their nature, as far removed from each other as 
is pole from pole." 

We had not dared to hope for an ally as strong in the 
result of research as Dr. Dale, who would so boldly deny a 
ritualistic law for baptism with water, and especially in the 
case of John, who really lived " under the law," and to whom 
we had conceded more of the ritual in his commission than 
does Dr. D. But Dr. D. bases his argument on that moral 
sense of the word baptisma which we, for many years, had 
been fully persuaded was the underlying sense, as used in the 
New Testament ; hence, we see no way of evading the result 
of his research. Of course the Christian era does not go back 
on this record to a ritualism exceeding that of John's day, 
and Dr. D. sees this as clearly. 

Primary and Secondary use of Words. 

The primary use of all words and language pertains to 
things seen and temporal. When the human mind soars high 
enough to talk about things mental, moral and spiritual, the 
language before framed, endowed with an added mental, 
spiritual, or moral sense, is oft used to save the coining of new 
words for every variety of sentiment or meaning. 

Thus the word day is first applied to that period of time 
that succeeds the night. Its moral, religious, and symbolic 
use is known to all Scripture readers. If you please to call 
this the secondary meaning, or derived meaning, none will 
object, but the derived sense is just as full-orbed and prolific 
and intelligible as the primary, and just as needful. So the 
word heaven was first applied to the concave above the earth, 
then to the moral and spiritual realm where the righteous 
dwell, and this latter sense, or use of the word, is infinitely 
more momentous than the other. 

So with the word baptism and all its synonyms — wash, 
cleanse, sanctify, purify, regenerate, merge into, disciple, etc. 
• — the primary sense of them all was carnal and outward, but 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 81 

when God would bring a moral and spiritual kingdom to 
light, and adumbrate it to the mind of man, destined for, and 
aspiring to immortality, all these terms are appropriated to 
that spiritual cleansing and renewal, which alone fits man for 
a blessed immortality. Who shall say that the latter, the 
moral sense or application of these terms, is not the more 
pregnant and momentous ? Ay, as heaven is higher than the 
earth ? "Why drag, if possible, these terms down to the level 
of the earthly and the carnal, rather than, after the pattern 
of prophets, and all inspired men, essay with them by these 
very terms to lift men up to the saving power, to the true life 
and all that is holy and heavenly? 

The Baptism sought by the Old Dispensation, 

The baptism really sought, even under the Old Dispensa- 
tion, was spiritual, as we have seen ; for God never exalted 
forms in place of this, and only allowed the spiritual things 
to be symbolized in an age, and among a people, that needed 
the diagram in their rudimentary state. And when the sym- 
bol that aided the faith of some had usurped the place of the 
substance in the many, as the idol had taken the place of God 
in the heathen mind ; God " found fault with it," and " abol- 
ished " it. If the symbol code of the Old Testament be not 
annulled, no ceremonial law has been annulled. 

What the Great Reformation sought. 

That the Great Reformation, under John, Christ, and 
apostles, sought to substitute the moral and spiritual for the 
ceremonial and external, and this with respect to baptism, as 
well as sacrifices, temple worship, oblations, feasts, etc., the 
following considerations must evince ■ 

1. Spiritual heart-worship was sought in place of that which 
was external. 

2. The use of baptisma, as derived from the secondary, or 
moral sense of the word baptizo rather than baptismos, the 

6 



82 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

•word used by secular writers, and this so oft with its synonyms 
and parallelisms, convert, regenerate, remit sins, cleanse, wash, 
sanctify, save, shall be saved, etc., cumulatively tends to estab- 
lish the same truth. 

3. The Patristic writers so oft using the term in a spiritual 
sense, and spiritualizing so many typical events, as baptisms 
that were not external baptisms, but by them were made con- 
tinually to point to the spiritual baptism, or purifying of the 
heart, points in the same direction. 

There is almost no end to these allusions, and spiritual in- 
terpretations of the prior acts of the patriarchs and prophets, 
and the historic records of the Old Testament. In Judaic 
Bap., p. 134: 

Tertullian, in commenting upon the scene described in 
Gen. i. 2, where the Spirit of God is said to have hovered 
over chaos, says : 

" Whereby also may be recognized the prime nature of baptism .... fore- 
shown by a figure, that the Spirit of God, which from the beginning was up- 
borne above the waters would transform the imbued. The holy was borne 
above the holy, as that which here received sanctity from that upborne 
.... so the nature of the waters was sanctified by the Holy, and itself 
received the power to sanctify." 

This teaches correctly that all true baptism must be origin- 
ally derived from the Holy Spirit. With Tertullian's bor- 
rowed conceit, that thus the Holy Spirit imparted power to 
the inert material element of water to purify the soul, we neee 
have noticing in common. 

Ambrose, speaking of the flaming sword that was placed 
at the east of Eden to " keep the way of the tree of life," says ( 
p. 223 : 

" Sin began and baptism began ; by which they might be purified who de> 

sired to return Who is it that baptizes by this fire? . . . He, of whom 

John says, 'He shall baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.' .... Then shall 
come the Great Baptizer (for so I call him, as Gabriel called him), Luke i. 32, 
saying, ' He shall be Great,' he will see many standing before the entrance of 
Paradise, he will wave the sword turning every way, he will say to those on 
the right hand, ' Enter into my kingdom j ' so every one of us burned (purified) 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 83 

by that sword, not consumed, having entered into the delights of Paradise, 
may give thanks to his Lord, saying, Thou hast brought us into rest." 

This, then, was a baptism that saved. So Origen, p. 224, 
says : 

" Therefore the Saviour brings both sword and fire, and baptizes those 
things which could not be purged by the purification of the Holy Spirit." 

So, alluding to a coal of fire being laid upon the lips of 
Isaiah (Isa. vi. 5-7), Ambrose says : 

" Read the commandments of the Law and you will find it written, ' Whoso- 
ever shall touch the dead becomes defiled, (Num. xvii. 11). Therefore we need pur- 
gation, because we have touched the dead. . . . We all touch the dead, for who 
will boast that he keeps his heart pure, or who will dare to say that he is clean 
from sins ? . . . Hence, immediately one of the Seraphim came down and 
touched his (Isaiah's) lips with a coal and cleansed his unclean lips." 

The connection of the above shows that Ambrose was 
speaking of the many baptisms known under the Law, for he 
says " Baptism is not one," but many. 

So Eusebius says, p. 241 : 

" Serenus, who after the endurance of great torments is said to have been 
beheaded, and of women, Herais, yet a catechumen (t. e. unbaptized), received 
that baptism which is by fire, and departed out of this life." 

Thus Justin Martyr, commenting on Isa. i. 16, 17, "Wash 
you, make you clean," etc., points out to Trypho, the Jew, the 
difference between the true baptism and that baptism with 
water which the Jews practised. He says : 

" Through the washing of repentance and of the knowledge of God, which 
was established on account of the transgression of the people of God, as Isaiah 
declares, we have believed and made known that this very baptism, which he 
fore-announced, is the only one able to cleanse the repenting ; this is the water 
of life. But the cisterns which you (Jews) have dug out for yourselves are 
broken and are useless to you. For of what use is that baptism ivhich cleanses 
the flesh and the body only ? Baptize the SOUL FROM ANGER AND FROM COVE- 
TOUSNESS, AND FROM ENVY, AND FROM HATE, AND BEHOLD THE BODY IS PURE." 

So Jerome, on the same text, " Wash ye, be clean" says : 

'* Instead of former victims and burnt-offerings, and the fat of fed beasts, 
and the blood of bulls and of goats .... the religion of the Gospel pleases 



84 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

me, that ye may be baptized by my (Christ's) blood, through the washing of 
regeneration, which alone can take away sins." 

Basil, quoting Isa. iv. 4 : 

" When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, 
and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem by the spirit of judgment and 
the spirit of burning," says: "Perhaps, there are three meanings of baptism, 
purification from defilement, regeneration by the Spirit, and trial by the fire of 
judgment, so that the washing (v. 4) is to be understood in reference to the 
removal of sin now, but by ' the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burn- 
ing,' the reference is to the trial by fire in the future world." 

Thus by every citation from the Fathers in expounding the 
Scriptures, and by a penetrating survey of the Scripture lan- 
guage of the New Testament, respecting that baptism which 
steps beyond the Jewish, we see how far short of a full and 
complete comprehension of its meaning all ritualists have 
fallen. God is not a ritualist — inspiration does not teach 
ritualism — but a spiritual condition as high above aught that 
rituals can secure as heaven is higher than the earth. 

There are almost as many symbol baptisms spoken of by the 
Fathers, where water could form no element or adjunct, as w 7 here 
it is. Whatever had the effect of introducing the subject into 
a new and abiding condition, is said by the ancients to baptize 
that subject. Thus, by the Mosaic Law, the sprinkling of blood, 
the sprinkling of heifer ashes, the sprinkling of water, 
and laving with water, were equally agencies employed in in- 
troducing the subject into a ceremonially pure condition, and 
that ceremonially pure condition is called baptism. So God's 
placing the flaming sword at Eden's gate, and touching 
Isaiah's lips with a coal of fire, and sufferings, and martyr- 
dom, are supposed to have the same effect, and are as fitly 
called baptisms* The waters of Marah (Ex. xv. 23) are 

*"The Seleucians taught that baptism is not to be received by water, and 
substituted a mode of baptism with fire." 

" Valentinus re-baptized those who had only received water-baptism, con- 
ferring on them the baptism of fire." (Well, fire will purify the flesh.) 

" The Ascodrutce, a branch of the Valentinians, rejected the use of all sym- 
bols and sacraments." (2d Century.) 

" Clemens Alexandrinus remarked on the proverb, •' Be not pure in the laver, 



OEIGIX AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. bO 

purified by a tree thrown into them, and this is called a bap- 
tism of the waters : they remained in a baptized state. So 
Ambrose assures us, and in speaking upon this very point he 
assures us that there were many (so-called) external baptisms 
in his day, and even which are not real baptisms, because they 
result not in a purified condition. He says : 

"There are many kinds of baptisms, but the Apostle announces one baptism. 
There are baptisms of the Gentiles, but they are not baptisms. They are 
■washings, they cannot be baptisms. The body is washed ; sin is not ivashed 
away. There were baptisms of the Jews, some unnecessary, others in figure. 
.... Moses cast the wood into the fountain, and the water which before was 
bitter grew sweet. . . . That is bitter which cannot take away sin. Water, 
therefore, is bitter, but ichen thou shaft have received the cross of Christ, and the 
heavenly sacrament, it becomes sweet and pleasant." 

To Ambrose's view, then, nothing was baptism that did not 
remove sin. 

And in further proof that an element of the Great Reforma- 
tion under John, Christ and apostles, was the effort to substi- 
tute the moral for the external sense of baptism, we adduce 
also this fact — While it is true that the Fathers of the second 
century did, many of them, recognize the true baptism as in- 
ternal and spiritual — it is also true that near the close of this 
century some lapsed toward the carnal and outward concep- 
tion of it, yet ever used the term baptism as a synonym of 
regenerate, renew, sanctify, or merge into Christ, and as secur- 
ing salvation. Thus showing that by Christ and the apostles 
they had been instructed respecting the saving baptism only, 
and that the Church when drawn toward Christ and his teach- 
ings (and Paul's), retreated from the Jewish and outward 
view, but when unduly influenced by Judaism and the bor- 
rowed ideas of heathenism, lapsed into a trust in externals 



but in the mind/ — "I suppose an exact and firm repentance is a sufficient 
purification; judging and considering ourselves for the deeds we have done, 
cleansing the mind from sensual affections and former sins ; " p. 461. 



86 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 



The Fathers never used Baptism as a Symbol. 

But the Patrists never relapsed into that form of Judaism 
which regarded baptism as a type or symbol of purifying, as 
our modern theologians assume, but as conversion or regenera- 
tion itself; evincing that they had mistaken the efficacious 
agency in the work (the Holy Spirit), and were conceiving of 
some magical or divinely imparted power in water to regen- 
erate the soul. Tertullian discourses at large upon the per- 
vading and efficacious agency of water in nature's operations, 
and then, very incongruously infers its efficacy in renewing 
man morally and spiritually. He says (as quoted before) : 

" So the nature of the waters was sanctified by the Holy (Spirit) that brooded 
upon the waters, and itself received the power to sanctify." * 

This " sanctifying " of the waters of baptism was erewhile 
assigned to the officiating priest or administrator ; and hence 
early grew up, in the Western Church especially, this prime 
element of the Papacy — baptismal regeneration. 

From the internal baptism taught by Christ and apostles, 
they swung over wholly to the external. Protestant sects of our 
day have abridged the Patristic error, by swinging back only 
to the Jewish idea of a typical or symbol baptism. Yet many 
of the Fathers disowned and denied the saving power of ritual 
baptism. As saith Jerome : 

* So Cyril says : " If anyone desires to know why grace is given by means 
of water, and not by means of any other of the elements,- searching the divine 
Scriptures he will find out. For water is some great thing, the best of the 
four visible elements of the world. Heaven is the dwelling-place of angels, 
but the heavens are of the waters. The earth is the home of men, but the 
earth is of the waters. Before everything of the things which were made 
during the creation of the six days, the Spirit of God was upborne above the 
water. Water was the beginning of the world, and the Jordan was the begin- 
ning of the Gospels." 

Such a confounding of things natural and things spiritual was not uncom- 
mon among the Fathers, especially when ritualistic ideas began to steal upon 
them, and a hierarchy sought to lift up itself by this means. The crudeness of 
their philosophic views is also patent to the most cursory reader. 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 87 

"The bodies of infants stained with blood, are washed as soon as born. So 
also spiritual birth needs the salutary washing. The heathen practise many 
washings in their mysteries, but do not wash into salvation. So not only of 
heretics, but of those connected with the church, who do not receive with full 
faith the salutary baptism. They receive the water, but do not receive the 
Spirit; as Simon the Magician, who was baptized, indeed, with water, but by 
no means baptized into salvation." 

And Origex says — alluding to the laver where the sons of 
Aaron were to wash their hands and feet : 

" The word of the precept, truly, with the feet, orders the washing with 
internal water, announcing figuratively the sacrament (saving power) of bap- 
tism." 

And Clemens says : 

" Be pure, not by ivashing, but by thinking." 

Ambrose, also says : 

" We are renewed by the regeneration of washing — we are renewed by the 
effusion of the Holy Spirit." 

Quoting Ps. li. 2-7, he adds : 

" ' Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be clean/ He is rightly 
renewed icho is changed from the darkness of sin into the light of virtue and 
grace ! ... Rejoice, heavens, and be glad, earth, because of those who 
are about to be sprinkled with hyssop, and to be purified by the spiritual 
hyssop, through the power of Him, who, in His suffering, drank from the hyssop 
and the reed." 

Jerome, also, quoting Ezekiel xxxvi. 25 : 

"'And I will pour out (or sprinkle) upon you clean water,' . . So that upon 
the believing, and those converted, I will pour out the clean water of saving 
baptism, and I will cleanse them from their abominations and from all their 
errors, with which they have been possessed, and I will give to them a new heart, 
that they may believe upon the Son of God." 

Hilary says : 

" But sprinkling, according to the law, was the cleansing of sin through faith, 
purifying the people by the sprinkling of blood (Ps. I. 9), a sacrament of the 
future sprinkling by the blood of the Lord, faith, meanwhile, supplementing 
the blood of the legal sacrifice." 

Didymus of Alexandria writes : 

"And the very image of baptism (pillar of oloud and fire) both continually 



88 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

illuminated and saved all Israel, as Paul wrote (1 Cor. x. 1, 2), and as Ezekiel 
prophesied : 'I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from 
all your sins.' And David says, ' Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be 
clean.' " 

Cyril of Jerusalem is no less specific concerning the bap- 
tism that saves : 

" Thou seest the power of baptism — Be of good courage, Jerusalem, the 
Lord will take away all thine iniquities. The Lord will wash away the un- 
cleanness of his sons and daughters by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of 
burning ; He will sprinkle upon you clean water, and ye shall be purified from 
all your sin." 

And we find Justin Martyr, actually eschewing both ritual 
circumcision and baptism for the sake of the spiritual. He 

asks: 

" What, then, is the word of circumcision to me, having received testimony 
from God? What need is there of that baptism (with water) to one baptized 
by the Holy Spirit ? " 

Cyril calls spiritual baptism a circumcision : 

" Therefore by the likeness of the faith of Abraham we come into adoption. 
And then, after faith, like to him, we receive the spiritual seal, being circum- 
cised through washing by the Holy Spirit." 

Joshua is said to have circumcised Israel with a second 
circumcision by knives of stone. Origen and Justin Martyr 
compare this to the saving baptism. Justin says : 

" He is said to have circumcised the people with a second circumcision, which 
was an announcement of this circumcision with which Jesus Christ himself 
circumcises us from stones and other idols." 

Origen says : 

" But since Christ came, and gave us the second circumcision by the bap- 
tism of regeneration, and purged our souls, we have cast away all these things, 
and in their stead have received the answer of a good conscience in the Lord. 
Then, by the second circumcision, the reproaches of Egypt have been taken 
away from us, and the vices of our sins have been purged." 

Baptism by Blood. 
Cyprian says : 

". The baptism of a public confession and of blood may avail for salvation. 
. . . The Lord declares in the Gospel, that those baptized by His blood and 



OKIGIX AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 89 

passion, are sanctified and attain the grace of the divine promise; when He 
speaks to the thief, believing and trusting in the very passion, and promises 
that he shall be with Him in Paradise." 

Theofhylact says : 

" He (Christ) calls His death a baptism, as being a purging of us all." 

Tertullian says : 

" These two baptisms he shed forth from the wound of His pierced side." 

Did he shed forth an immersion f Nay, but the water of 
salvation, and the blood that atones ! 
Basil says : 

"The blood of the lamb (by Israel slain) is a type of the blood of Christ." 

Origen says : 

" That we may die, washed by our own blood, for it is the baptism of blood 
only which makes us purer than the baptism of water made us." 

Didymus of Alexandria gives us this remarkable testimony 
to the sufficiency of the spiritual baptism, and much more of 
the baptism of blood (or martyrdom) without water, to 
sanctify and save : 

" But without being born again by baptism through the Spirit of God, and 
senled by sanctification and made his temple, no one can partake of the 
heavenly blessings, although his life should be found in other respects blameless. 
However they who have attained martyrdom before baptism, being cleansed by 
their own blood, are thus made to live by the Spirit of God." 

And even Cyprian, with all his later zeal for infant salva- 
tion by water-baptism, is constrained to admit that a martyr's 
death is the best baptism. He asks : 

" Can the power of baptism be greater or better than confession, than martyr- 
dom, when one confesses Christ before men, and is baptized by his own blood ?" 

So, Basil, one of the early Fathers of note, says : 

" There are some who, in striving for piety, have undergone death for Christ, 
in reality, not in semblance, needing, for salvation, nothing of the water sym- 
bols, being baptized by their own blood." 

Cyril, also, assures us : 

" The Saviour calls martyrdom baptism, saying, ' Can ye drink of the cup 
that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? * " 



90 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Speaking of John the Forerunner, who baptized our Lord, 
John of Damascus says : 

" John was baptized by putting his hand upon the divine head, and by his 
own blood." 

Spiritual Baptism humanly administered. 

And this idea of baptism became very common, as we shall 
find many cases where a simple laying on of the hand was called 
baptism, but more generally called consolamentum, or spiritual 
baptism — since in thus laying on the hand the Holy Spirit was 
invoked — and claimed to be conferred by those thus laying 
on the hands, after the pattern of the apostles as mentioned 
in Acts viii. 18 ; vi. 6 ; xix. 6. Dr. Dale says : 

"The old Greeks did not hesitate, very freely, to speak of baptism as effected 
by the touch of the hand without water-using, a simple formula of invocation or 
consecration." 

Firmilian says : 

u Paul baptized those who had been baptized by John (before the Holy 
Spirit had been sent by the Lord) again, by spiritual baptism, and put his 
hand upon them that they might receive the Holy Ghost." 

And, as though Christ had been baptized of John in the 
same manner, Hippolytus says : 

" He bowed his head to be baptized by John." 

Jewish Purifyings not restricted to the use of Water. 

We have already cited the Jewish and Patristic use of the 
term fire-baptism. And, summing up, we find that the Jewish 
writers and Christian Fathers used the term baptism to signify 
a religious purification or merging into Christian life, as oft 
where water was not the regimen or element, as where it was. 
Dr. Dale, in summing up his treatise on " Judaic Baptism," 
says : 

" The number of facta embraced in the investigation (of the question) is not less 
than fifty , and the number of times in ichich the Greek word (baptizo) in one form 
or another appears is more than three times fifty. These facts," he adds, "are 
all taken from Jewish sources, from writings both inspired and uninspired. 
Ten Jewish writers (here cited) employ the word in application to their re- 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 91 

ligious rites, and to matters apart from religion. Christian writers, with one 
consent, interpret these facts of Jewish religious history as cases of baptism. 
The time embraced by the usage of this word by Jewish writers, in application 
to their religious rites, extends through several centuries." 

Dr. D. not only affirms that these baptisms were usually 
sprinklings either of water, blood, or ashes (if physical bap- 
tisms), but concludes thus : 

" Judaic baptism is a condition of ceremonial purification effected by the 
washing of the hands or feet; by the SPRINKLING of sacrificial blood, or heifer 
ashes ; by the pouring upon of water; by the touch of a coal of fire ; by the 
waving of a flaming sword ; and by divers other modes and agencies, dependent 
in no wise upon any form of act, or covering of the object." 

Dr. D. further asserts that the word baptizo is so oft used 
both in classic and inspired writings (but especially the latter), 
where no physical element is implied, that the presence of the 
physical element must be proved, and never gratuitously 
assumed. He adds : "There is no such language to be met 
with as baptism into water." And he affirms, that when water 
was used by the Jews, it was a symbol agency, merely ; the 
real baptism was the supposed resultant purification. This 
attained resultant condition is what is called baptism — a mo- 
mentary act never. The Baptist idea, he affirms, that baptizo 
means to dip, that is, "to put an object within, and withdraw- 
ing it out of a fluid element," is pre-eminently baseless : 

u Baptizo makes demand for a condition of intusposition without regard to 
the manner of its accomplishment ; and no momentary introduction and removal 
is possible without destroying the life of the word." 

This, he affirms, is both its classic and religious use : 

"The secondary (or religious) use of the word is as clearly as it is exclu- 
sively based on an indefinitel}' prolonged continuance of condition in contradis- 
tinction from one that is momentary and evanescent. . . .The baptism preached by 
John was a baptism (eis metanoian) into repentance without removal : elsewhere 
termed (eis aphesin amartidn) into remission of sins, without removal from that 
state. These baptisms are intensely real, thorough and abiding changes in the 
condition of the soul." — Johannic Bap., p. 308. 

If the reasoning of Dr. D be correct (and we see no way to 
evade it), we discover what unutterably unworthy views of 
baptism nearly all who baptize with water have entertained ; 



92 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

and how, by the utter degradation of this word baptizo and its 
derivative baptisma, they have dethroned a great moral truth 
of revelation, and put in the place of it a worthless shell, a 
shadow — a freezing and love-crucifying ceremonial. Dr. D. 
quotes from the Fathers such accounts of the baptism of 
Christ by John as lead himself to doubt whether John's bap- 
tism of Christ was aught more than the consolamentum, or lay- 
ing on of hands on the Redeemer's head ; through which, as in 
the sequel it is recorded, the Holy Spirit in its ineffable ful- 
ness descended upon Him. He claims that Mark i. 9, is the 
only passage that by Greek usage apparently militates against 
this view (Matthew being as reconcilable with it as with the 
Baptist theory), and he quotes Jerome, and Gregory Thauma- 
turgus, and many others, as giving the same interpretation to 
Mark i. 9, as himself. 

They read it thus : " Jesus comes (eis) unto the Jordan to 
be baptized." And Hippolytus, describing the baptism, says, 
"He (Christ) bowed his head to be baptized by John," i. e., 
that John might lay his hands thereon. 

Gregory dilates upon the theme thus — representing John 
as saying : 

"How shall I touch thy undented head? How shall I stretch out my right 
hand over thee who hast stretched out the heavens as a curtain, and estab- 
lished the earth upon the waters ? How shall I stretch out my servile fingers 
over thy divine head ? How shall I wash the spotless and the sinless ? How 
shall I enlighten the light? How shall I offer prayer for thee who dost receive 
the prayers of those who know thee not? In baptizing others I baptize into 
thy name, that they may believe on thee coming with glory; baptizing thee 
of whom shall I make mention? Into whose name shall I baptize thee? 
Into the name of the Father? but thou hast all the Father in thyself! or into 
the name of the Son ? but there is none other beside thee, the Son of God ! or 
into the name of the Holy Ghost ? but He is of the same nature with thee, in 
everything united with thee — of the same will, of the same mind, of the same 
power, of the same honor, and with thee receives worship from all ! Baptize, 
therefore, if thou wilt, Lord, baptize me the baptizer! Make me whom 
thou hast caused to be born, to be born again ! Stretch out thy dread right 
hand which thou hast prepared for thyself, and crown by thy touch my head, 
that, forerunner of thy kingdom, and crowned like a forerunner, I may preach 
to sinners, crying unto them, ' Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the 
sin of the world.'" 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 93 

Jesus is represented as answering : 

"'Lend me thy right hand, Baptist, for the present ministration Take 

hold of my head which the Seraphim worship. Baptize me who am about to 
baptize them that believe by icater, and Spirit and fire; by water, which is 
able to wash away the filth of sin ; by Spirit, which is able to make the 
earthly Spiritual; oy fire, consuming by nature the thorns of transgression.' 
The Baptist having heard these things, stretching out his trembling right 
hand, baptized the Lord." 

Now, why should Gregory in the above mean literal water, 
any more than he means literal fire ? for both are mentioned. 
And the whole scene as presented, precisely resembles every 
account we have of those who rejected water-baptism, and 
with laying on of hands, invoked the descent of the Holy 
Ghost upon their initiates. Not that we doubt that John did 
at times use the symbol of water, as a priest of the Jewish 
faith, but his baptism was infinitely more portentous and 
veal than any such ceremonial could be. Justin Martyr 
says that John dwelt near the Jordan, perhaps " beyond 
Jordan," as one evangelist has it — and thither the people 
thronged to be roused and thrilled by the energy of his ap- 
peals — and even the Jews, by thousands, to be purified by the 
" baptism of repentance into the remission of sins." And 
Dr. Dale reiterates : 

"Matthew's 'Repent!' and Mark's and Luke's 'Baptism of repentance into 
the remission of sins,' and John's ' Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away 
the sin of the world,' have all alike the same amount of water in them; that is 
to say, just as much as may be found in the burned out craters of the moon. 
The verb baptizo, and the noun baptisma, as used in the history of John's 
baptism, have no more to do with the quantity or the manner of using the 
water employed in his symbol rite than has the multiplication table to do with 
the amount or manner of using Rothschild's wealth. Let these words mean 
what they may, they have no more control, in the relations in which they 
stand, over the use of water, than a sleeping infant has over the earth's diur- 
nal revolution." 

Dr. D., alluding to some that Augustine mentions, who 
literally baptized with fire, by burning the right ear, says : 

" If this baptism was to be by real fire, then these heretics did not err much 
in employing bona fide fire, instead of referring it to the fire of Pentecost, as 
do our Baptist friends. Moreover, the reasoning by which they seek to justify 



94 RITUALISM DETHRONED, 

a dipping into water, as a substitute for baptism in water, viz. because such a 
baptism would drown, is equally apologetic for those Seleucians, — for fire bap- 
tism will burn up. If, to escape drowning, baptism may be converted into a 
dipping, then to escape burning up, baptism may be converted into a cauter- 
ization of the ear. It is no less a heresy to convert Bible baptism into 
water dipping, than it is to convert baptism 'by the Holy Ghost and fire' into 

a burning of the right lobe of the ear Of the two heresies, that of the 

fire Baptists is the less; for there is no evidence that they regarded the fire as 
appointed to be the element within which the baptism was to take place, but 
only as a symbol; while the water Baptists declare that water is that within 
which the baptism is commanded to take place. They say, that God does 
clearly and imperatively demand a baptism in water. If they are right as to 

God's command, they are wrong as to their obedience Dipping into 

water is no more Patristic baptism, than is the dipping of white linen in 
spring water, the same as covering that same white linen in a purple dye, and 
leaving it there. Every Patrist that ever lived would reject, at a word, the 
notion that a dipping into water was, or was of the essence of, Christian bap- 
tism. Use it in whatever form they may, they do universally use it in the faith 
that it is filled with the influence of the Holy Ghost, and so, has poicer, as a 
means, to baptize the soul : which soul-baptism, thoroughly changing its con- 
dition by the remission of sins, was, in their view, Christian baptism. There- 
fore, they could and did baptize, as absolutely and as literally, the dying by 
sprinkling as the living by covering." 

Dr. D., in pushing this investigation into the ulterior pre- 
mises, furnished by Greek usage, in " Johannic Baptism," p. 
235, says : 

"If it be insisted upon, that John's commission Baptizein en hudati refers 
to the execution of a physical baptism, the element of the baptism being water, 
and the verb used in its primary literal sense, then it is as certain as that Greek 
is Greek, that John was commissioned to drown every person whom he baptized. 
Not only does not the Greek word ever take out of the condition in which it 
once places its object, and not only is this the Greek word employed expressly 
to denote the drowning of men (see abundant citations on another page), but 
in accordance with the Baptist interpretation itself, the result of John's baptism 
was to leave his disciples resting within the water ; as the Baptist Quarterly for 
April, 1869, p. 142, says, ' Baptizo never does take its subject out of the water.' 
Whether, then, we look at this commission of John through a classic, a Hel- 
lenistic, or Patristic medium, there is an imperative arrest of that interpreta- 
tion which would command John to baptize men and women in water." 

Water is not the receiving element of the baptism, but sim- 
ply an adjunct symbol — sometimes used; — "repentance" and 



ORIGIN AND IMPORT OF BAPTISM. 95 

'* remission of sins " is the receiving element, the terminal point, 
and attained condition. 

Mistaking on this one point, see the endless confusion of 
ideas respecting baptism, and the utter lack of discrimination 
between those Scripture passages which allude to a ritual, and 
those which speak of the internal and spiritual baptism only. 
Even Baptists can publish a tract from which such a sum- 
mary as the following may be copied verbatim. See " Jo- 
hannic Baptism," p. 218. 

"Baptism." 

1. " The word baptism is Greek, and signifies a dipping. 

2. " There is but one baptism, for Paul so says, Eph. iv. 5. 

3. " That one baptism is water; so says Peter, Acts x. 4. 

4. " This one baptism in water, is a burial ; Rom. vi. 4; Col. ii. 12. 

5. " A man is not in Christ before he is baptized, for we are plainly taught 
that we must be baptized into Him ; Gal. iii. 27. 

6. " Baptism is for the remission of sins that are past; Acts ii. 38. 

7. " Baptism, like all God's commands, is essential to salvation ,• 1 Peter 
iii. 21." 

The italicizing and emphasizing is from the tract itself. 
And when such a tract can be sent out by a body of Chris- 
tians styling themselves evangelical, it is time for a Philip to 
inquire: " Understandest thou what thou readest?" And for 
an " Ezra " or a Dale to give the sense of the word. In the 
above extract is seen both ritualism and sacramentarianism, 
without qualification. The following from Alexander Camp- 
bell can be no more so, based also, as it is, upon the mere 
physical or external sense of the word baptizo : 

" Baptism is for the remission of sins, to give us through repentance ind 
faith, a solemn pledge and assurance of pardon; any other baptism is a human 
invention. * He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved/ associates faith 
and baptism as antecedents, whose consequent is salvation. The apostles in 
their epistles allude to baptism as a symbol of moral purification, a washing 
away of sin in a figure, declarative of a true and real remission of sin, a 
formal and definite release of the conscience from the feeling of guilt, and all 
its condemnating power. Baptism teas for the true, real, and formal r emission 
of sins, through faith in the Messiah, and a genuine repentance toward God. 
.... Not that there is anything in the mere element of water, or in the act, 



96 EITUALISxM DETHRONED. 

or in the administrator, or in the formula, but all its virtue and efficacy is in 
the faith and intelligence of him that receives it. ' Baptism doth save us/ 
To him that believeth and repenteth of his sins, and to none else, then, we 
m.iy safely say, 'Be baptized for the remission of your sins,' and it will surely 
be granted by the Lord, and enjoyed by the subject, with an assurance and 
an evidence which the word and ordinances of the Lord alone can bestow." 

None that approve the teaching of Alexander Campbell 
will say, that in the above extract we have not presented as 
fair, complete, and concise a statement of those teachings as 
could be given, and that in his own words. And we must 
admit that the chief impression made upon our mind, while 
copying it, is that of the astounding moral bewilderment of 
an otherwise acute reasoner and genuine scholar. As another 
has remarked : 

" The body of his reasoning upon this subject contains statements which in 
their relations to each other are so indefinite, so ambiguous, so incongruous, 
and so irreconcilable, that the conviction is forced upon the mind that the 
writer is painfully struggling to establish harmony between admitted, vital 
truth, and the pernicious error of sadly misinterpreted texts of Scripture." 

We will admit that he conceives of the design and results 
of baptism (the external) as did many of the Fathers of the 
third century, viz., as exclusively "for the remission of sins" 
But he ought not to have drunk in their superstitious conceit, 
that God had halloived the waters of all the earth that they 
might exert a saving power in baptism. Nor ought he to 
assume that a divine command for an external act imparts to 
that act a saving power. God commanded circumcision, yet 
thousands in all ages have been saved without circumcision, 
and thousands and tens of thousands of the circumcised have 
been lost. Cornelius and his household were not circum- 
cised — yet the law of circumcision had not yet been formally ab- 
rogated — and they were saved. The external act must ever have 
some ulterior end short of absolute soul-salvation — it may be 
a means— but the surrender of the heart to God alone attains 
salvation by whatever means induced. And see how oft 
Mr. C. admits and then denies this truth in the extract above. 
Note first the utter incongruity of making a sinner's act, or 



ORIGIN AND IMPOET OF BAPTISM. 97 

any saint's act, " a solemn pledge and assurance of pardon." 
What monster of iniquity may not have a " solemn pledge, 
and assurance of pardon," if a bodily act of his own gives it? 
Again, " it is a symbol of moral purification — a washing away 
of sin in a figure." All this is very well. But hear the 
sequel, — " declarative of a true and real remission of si7is." 
Then, forsooth the sinner, by consenting that an administra- 
tor (the absolver) may plunge him in the water, thereby de- 
clares his own sins remitted — thereby furnishes himself with a 
"solemn pledge and assurance of pardon" — ay, attains the 
" true, real, and formal remission of sins ! " — of which he en- 
joys " an evidence and assurance which the word and ordi- 
nances of the Lord alone can bestow." Now we scarcely 
know how to characterize, as we think merited, such a sub- 
version, and perversion of the teachings of God's word as to 
the way of salvation, and especially as to the baptism 
that saves. No wonder that Mr. C. himself alludes to an 
"imaginary incongruity between the means and the end." 
But list! At times Mr. C. will state other and connected 
terms or conditions of salvation, — and thus, by a sort of meta- 
physical mysticism seek to cover his bold and bald rituals 
ism — gyrating like one on a rotary platform, that he may 
seem to face one way while his scheme faces the other way : 
thus " to him that believeth and repenteth of his sins, and to 
none else, then, we may safely say, - Be baptized for the remis- 
sion of your sins.' " And he assures us that it will surely be 
granted by the Lord, and we may enjoy such assurance as the 
word and ordinances of the Lord only can bestow. Now we 
tell Mr. C. and all his followers, that " To him that believeth 
and repenteth of his sins," without Mr. C.'s water baptism, God 

WILL GRANT AN ASSURANCE OF PAFvDON AND REMISSION OF 
SINS INFINITELY ABOVE Mr. C.'S COLD COGNIZANCE OF A RIT- 
UAL obedience, as taught by the mere letter of the " word," 
and the "handwriting of ordinances," — even "our con- 
science in the Holy Ghost bearing witness, and giving 
the peace of God which passeth all understanding" — even 



98 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

"joy unspeakable and full of glory." This is heaven, higher 
than the human consciousness merely, of having performed a 
ritual act, and this may be had without the assumed act.* 
Hence Mr. C.'s interpretation of the baptism that is connected 
with the remission of sins is radically false, and strikes a fatal 
blow at Christianity itself. Yet would he have his adherents 
distinctively called "Christians" — thus asking all who main- 
tain the true faith to libel Christianity, by giving up the 
name to a mere pretender — one that robs the atonement of 
Christ of its alone saving efficacy, and rejects thus the " head- 
stone of the corner" of the Christian's hope, and rejects the 
alone sanctifying efficacy of the Holy Spirit. 
Well says Dr. D. : 

"It is Mr. C, and not John, the Forerunner, that has put water into that 
laptisma of John. The President of Bethany has embarrassed himself, and 
imperilled others by a misunderstanding of that great announcement of John, 
the 'baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.' When the error shall 
have been corrected, and the true announcement of the Holy Ghost, through 
the Forerunner, is allowed to be made, of a baptism, not into water, but into 
the remission of sins ; effected not by a human administrator, but by the Holy 
Spirit working through repentance, then human error will be eliminated and 
the pure truth of God will be revealed." 

* Yet Mr. C. will ever affirm that faith and repentance are insufficient with- 
out baptism (in water) to transfer the soul to the renewed state — to the king- 
dom and light of God. This putting faith and repentance as antecedents, then, 
is a mere make-shift or tortuosity — an evasion — for the turning point, the 
transferring act, after all, is baptism in his scheme, disguise, appendage, and 
ruse it as he may. As well might he say that birth and the use of reason are 
adjuncts, for they are indispensable, but neither birth, nor reason, nor faith, 
nor repentance with him constitutes the new man, but baptism. 






CHAPTER III. 
WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 

WE have now reached a point where it may be proper to 
attempt an answer to the question : " What is Chris- 
tian Baptism as taught in the word of God?" 

We shall answer it very briefly in our own words, having, 
on pp. 71-81, given Dr. Dale's definition of Classic Baptism, of 
Johannic Baptism, and of Judaic Baptism, to which we con- 
cede, asking thereunto the attention of every reader. We 
shall answer the query, and quote two or three corroborative 
authors (one that we have largely quoted already), and then 
proceed to a definition such as philology demands, followed 
by certain strictures, which will lead the way to the close of the 
present theme, and to the survey of the non-ritualistic historic 
record. To declare it, then, Christian Baptism is simply a 
baptism into Christ ; nothing more, nothing less. 

If a recognition of the three that " bear record in heaven," 
the " Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," be more than recogniz- 
ing our "oneness" in the "Sonship" of Christ, then Christian 
baptism in its highest and most complete sense, is a baptism into 
the Father, Son, and Holy, Ghost. 

In truth, to define the word (both the verb baptizo, and the 
noun baptisma) in harmony with New Testament usage, which 
is in perfect harmony with the classical primary and second- 
ary meaning of the word, we shall discover that a physical or 
external sense is there rarely attributable to it, or if it be, it is 
only by inference or allusion, and not the direct and palpable 

99 



100 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

intent of the word. Dr. D. says that baptisma is never found 
in the New Testament in a complementary relation with water. 
The following are the only relations where it occurs when 
speaking of John's baptism : 1. Baptisma autou (his baptism). 
2. Baptisma Ioannou (John's baptism). 3. Baptisma ekerusse 
(baptism preached). 4. Baptisma metanoias ekerusse (baptism 
of repentance preached). 5. Baptisma metanoias ebaptise 
(baptism of repentance baptized). 6. Baptisma metanoias eis 
aphesin amartion kerussbn (preaching the baptism of repentance 
into the remission of sins). Dr. Dale says : 

" In all these limiting adjuncts water fails to make an appearance." "There 
is not a particle of evidence conjoining 'o Baptistes (the Baptizer) with a 
physical complementary element." ''Merger, the corresponding word, derived 
from mergo, through merge, presents in its usage the most absolute evidence of 
divorce from physical relations." 

Merge is a law term designating the drowning, sinking, ab- 
sorption, or extinguishment of one estate in another. The 
Christian baptism designates the merging, sinking, or absorp- 
tion of one person in another — i. e., making their spirit, cause, 
and interest, one ! We may define, then, in strict harmony 
with classic, Judaic and Johannic usage : 

BAPTIZO (the verb), 1, to merge into, as to " baptize into Christ," 
to merge into Christ ; 2, to consecrate or transfer allegiance to, as, 
44 baptized unto Moses," allegiance transferred to Moses ; 3, to induct 
or intvspose, to come into a vital union with ; as Christ says, " Abide 
in me and I in you;" 4, to renew, convert, or regenerate, through 
this vital union of the One all pure, with one that was impure : 
Hence, 5, to purify, sanctify, cleanse, remit sin, wash, hallow, etc. 
"We have quoted in the foregoing pages, in full measure, these words 
used as synonyms of baptize. 6, to anoint, imbue, endow, fill with the 
Spirit, endue with potoer from on high, fill with the fulness of God, 
etc , as, " Ye shall be baptized with the Hoty Ghost," " Behold, I 
rend the promise of my Father upon you," '"'Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost," etc. 

These definitions are borne out by the manifest New Testa- 
ment aim and usage. That a ritual purifying of the Jews is 
also alluded to in the New Testament, in several passages, we 
question not ; but this not being Christian baptism, does not 
properly come into the list of definitions. 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 101 

AVe will also briefly define the noun baptisma, as used in 
the New Testament, prefacing the remark that baptismos is 
used in a few cases, confessedly referring to the Jewish ritual 
baptisms ; but never, seemingly, ever commanding or com- 
mending them in a single epistle, either to Jews or Gentiles. 
The proper New Testament word, then, we define thus : 

BAPTISMA, 1, a saved condition, as, "baptism doth also now 
save us," 1 Pet. iii. 21 ; 2, a merged or intusposed condition, as, "As 
many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ;" 3, a 
doctrine that points the way of salvation, as " The baptism of John, 
was it from heaven, or of men ? " 4, the cross of suffering, or martyr- 
dom, as, " I have a baptism to be baptized with," etc. Christ allud- 
ing to the coming agony and ministry of the cross. 5, a renewed or 
regenerated condition, as ''' The baptism of repentance into the remis- 
sion of sins ; " 6, a purified or endowed condition, as " But ye are 
washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name 
of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God," "But ye 
have an unction from the Holy One," " The Holy Ghost fell on all 
them that heard the word." 

Dr. E. Beecher's Testimony. 

To the definitions above given tends the whole work of Rev. 
E. Beecher, D.D., entitled " Baptizo ; its Import and Modes.'* 
Dr. B. has virtually taken the word out of the category of a 
question of modes, or of one of mere physical relations and in- 
quiries, by attempting to establish for the word the generic 
sense of purify, which attempt, however, partially failed, be- 
cause of the inadequacy of the word purify, or any other one 
word, to meet the whole scope of the Greek usage of the term 
baptizo. He did, however, establish that sense of the word, 
and that in moral as well as physical relations — as palpably 
in the one as the other — from the Jewish usage — from the 
New Testament — from the Christian Fathers — and from Greek 
writers and lexicographers. And if the fundamental position 
of Dr. B., in his work, be correct thus far, that it ceases to be 
a question of mode as to immersion, or pouring, or sprinkling, 
and becomes one of typical or real cleansing or purification, by 
whatever agency or mode attained ; then, so far, his interpreta- 
tion harmonizes with Dr. Dale, and with our own definitions. 



102 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

His inductive reasoning corroborates Dr. Dale's interpretation 
of Judaic baptism, but fails to meet fully the question of 
Christian baptism. Christian baptism, in the New Testament, 
includes more fully the conception of a merging into Christ, 
than of a purifying by Christ. Aud to this not only agrees 
the Great Commission (Matt, xxviii. 19) ; but Rom. vi. 3-10; 
Col. ii. 12, and 1 Cor. xii. 13, will accept of nothing short of 
the merging into Christ. The term purify is altogether inept 
and inadequate in expounding these passages. Dr. B. labored 
through many pages to show that these passages could not be 
forced to a ritual and modal interpretation, but found it rather 
awkward and tame to say, " We are buried with Christ by 
purification" whereas the other, the Christian definition — We 
are merged into Christ, secures not only the purification, but all 
else that appertains to the fulness of the Christian life, for 
thereby we come to live in Christ. 

Dr. B., in a personal conversation with the writer, some 
years since, admitted that in the Great Commission, " Go ye 
and teach all nations, baptizing them" etc., the word, if ren- 
dered purify, as he would render it, may, as properly, and per- 
haps, more in harmony with the intent of the commission, be 
understood in the moral and not physical sense. He thus 
recognizes the fact that the great work of the Church is to 
morally purify the nations. And, in a letter replying to the 
writer's letter of inquiry, some years later (in 1868), Dr. B. 
cites from the earliest Greek lexicographers, definitions of 
baptizo, which, bating one ritual allusion, harmonize with Dr. 
Dale's and our own anti-ritual definitions in full. We quote 
from the letter alluded to : 

" The lexicons relating to baptizo are those of Zonaras and Pha- 
vorixus. These two agree in definition, and omit altogether the idea 
to immerse, etc. They give the religious, the ecclesiastical sense of 
the word. They define it in Greek, which translated is as follows : 
' Baptizo, the remission of sins by water and the Spirit. The un- 
speakable forgiveness of sins. The loosing of the bands {of sin) 
granted by the love of God towards man.'' This is equivalent to sacri- 
ficial purification. They add, what is equivalent to moral purifica- 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 103 

tion : ' TJw voluntary ordering of a new life according to the will of 
God. The releasing or recovery of the soul for that which is better ,' i.e. 
holiness. 

4t These lexicons do not give purify expressly as the sense of baptizo, 
but they give the equivalents of sacrificial and moral purification. 
Basil the Great defines Baptism as Purification. 

" Yours fraternally, 

"Edward Beecher." 

Even the cursory reader of the above will not fail to see 
that whatever symbol of water may have been used in baptism, 
the lexicographers named did not gather from the teachings 
of the Church, or from inspiration, the conception of baptism 
as anything short of real spiritual regeneration. 

Many of the lexicographers of a later and modern date 
have, evidently, been largely influenced in their definitions by 
the intense ritualism into which the Greek, Roman, Lutheran 
and English Churches have relapsed. A philological research, 
like those of Drs. Beecher and Dale, absolutely outweighs 
them all. Like scientists, they chiefly keep themselves to the 
external sense, and classic use of the word, admitting as an 
exception only the ritualistic religious sense.* It was not 
their work to inquire after a religious use of it, which even the 
carnal and lapsed cotemporary religionists had failed to 
discern, f 

* Their definitions are inadequate to meet the exigences of classic usage, as 
Dr. Dale has abundantly shown. 

f Yet they all give the religious ritual or moral sense of purify, cleanse, or 
wash, in their definition of the word. 

Parkhurst's " Greek Dictionary " defines baptizo, to wash with toater, in token 
of purification from sin. 

Greenfield defines it, " In New Testament, to wash, to perform ablution, to 
cleanse" etc. 

Ainsworth defines thus, " To baptise is to wash any one in the sacred baptismal 
font, or to sprinkle on them the consecrated waters." 

This definition is evidently drawn wholly from the customs of the Greek and 
Roman Churches of to-day. 

Wahl (Robinson's translation) renders baptizo, first to wash, to perform ab- 
lution, to cleanse, etc. (over.) 



104 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Rerueruber, all the prophets and apostles found it necessary 
to turn the attention of an apostate world to that spiritual, 
internal and eternal kingdom which was so dimly apprehended 
by the carnal mind. 

De. J. W. Dale's Testimony. 

It remains but to elicit the testimony of Dr. Dale to the 
correctness of the definition we have given to CJiristian bap- 
tism . 

As we said, Dr. D.'s finishing volume, expressly upon that 
theme, is not yet issued. But we have recently had the plea- 



Stephamw gives baptizo the import, first, of immersion, then of cleansing or 
loaJshiiMj, 

Scapula, Passor, and Suidas give not only the above, but the more general 
meanings, wetting, washing, purging, cleansing. 

Verillong says, " Baptizo in Greek, the same as lavo in Latin, properly 
speaking, signifies nothing except washing." Meagre, indeed, had been his 
inquiries on the subject. 

Prof. Stuart was somewhat more nearly correct, when he says, "In the Bible, 
it signifies to wash in the literal sense." This is true of Mark vii., and a few 
other cases. 

Trelcatius. — " Baptism, according to the etymology of it, signifies any kind 
of ablution or cleansing." 

Doederline. — " The power of the word baptizo is expressed in xcashing, orper- 
forming ablution." 

Bnnnventura. — " Baptizo, in Greek, signifies as much as lavo an Latin, i. e., 
to wash." 

Maldonat. — "With the Greeks baptizo signifies to dip, to wash, to wash oft." 

The above lexicographers seem to give the early Greek secular sense, and 
the modem religious use of the word. As to the dipping, Attersol says, "Dip- 
ping into water is not necessary to the being of the sacrament." 

Dr. John P. Campbell says, " Christian baptism is a washing with water, in 
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." 

It cannot be a moral or spiritual cleasing, then ? Note the unseemly dogma- 
tism of lexicographers and bewildered Scripture expounders. 

Br. Wall. — " Baptizo, in Scripture, signifies to wash in general." And adds, 

" The sense of a Scripture word is not to be taken from the use of it in 
secular authors, but from the use of it in the Scriptures." 

Very well, let the research be thorough and unbiassed, and the result be at 
least self-consistent. 



WHAT IS CHEISTIAN BAPTISM? 105 

sure of scanning an epitome of the work, in the form of a 
lecture, delivered before the Philadelphia Synod, which, by a 
vote of the Synod, was specially prepared for the press and is 
now printed. The extract we make is from the closing para- 
graphs of the lecture, which, as every reader will see, not only 
fully sustains our definitions, but strengthens and confirms them, 
as we humbly claim, beyond the reach of cavil or hurtful 
criticism. Dr. Dale's philological and logical processes by 
which he has reached this conclusion respecting the nature of 
Christian baptism, and the exegesis of Matt, xxviii. 19, have 
received the most cordial and unmeasured approval of nearly 
every religious journal in the land (save those of the Baptists), 
and of all the prominent theological professors (save those 
excepted above), and, perhaps, of not less than a hundred of 
the doctors of divinity, pastors of the most prominent churches 
in the land.* The extract is exegetical of Matt, xxviii. 19. 

* Specimen of the notices and commendations of Dr. Dale's volumes on the 
Baptismal question. 

"A most masterly philological discussion." 

Prof. J. C. Moffat, of Princeton Theological Seminary. 
" The ablest treatise on the subject in the English language." 

Central Presbyterian. 
"Logic of Chillingworth, wit of Pascal." — N. Y. Evangelist. 
" It comes in like Blucher at Waterloo." — Congregational Review. 
" Nothing we know of in our language to compare with it." — W. Ch. Ad. 
" It is not simply a new booh, it is a new work, and one of extraordinary 
ability and originality. Proof is carried to the point of actual demonstration." 

Western Presbyterian. 

" It embodies an immense amount of research and learning." — Bishop Lee. 

Of " Judaic Baptism," hear scholars : 

" Thorough, — Candid, — Conclusive." — Prof. Packard, Ep. 

"Thorough — Exhaustive— Convincing." — Prof. Lindsey, Meth. Ep. 

" Learned — Thorough — Decisive." — Prof. Pond, Congl. 

Of " Johannic Baptism," hear scholars : 

u Happy and successful vindication of the truth." 

Prof. J. T. Cooper, Prcsb. 
"Will meet with the cordial approbation of the whole Christian Church." 

Prof. W. S. Plummer, Presb. 
" The author's investigations are singularly far-reaching, exhaustive, and 
satisfactory." — Prof. SchmucJcer, D.D., Lutheran, (over.) 



106 KITUALISM DETHRONED. 



Exegesis (in brief) of Matt, xxviii. 19. 

" Observe that the command is to make disciples of all nations. 
.... But discipleship under any teacher is represented as baptism 
into that teacher. Therefore, Paul asks of those who would be his 
disciples, ' Were ye baptized into Paul ? ' The Jews said, ' Te are 
Christ's disciples, but we are Moses' disciples,' and they refused to 
be baptized into Christ while they and their fathers were baptized 
into Moses. 

" There is, then, no rational ground to doubt, 1. That the nations 
were to be made disciples of Christ. 

"2. That the discipleship involved baptism into Christ. 

" 3. That, inasmuch as discipleship of Christ requires repentance 
and faith, this baptism into Christ is such baptism as is effected by 
the Holy Ghost. 

" 4. That if any ritual baptism be associated with the real baptism, 
then the rite can only symbolize the reality. There is an absolute 
necessity for this baptism of the nations into Christ as antecedent and 
preparative, and also causative of the ulterior baptism into the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Lord Jesus Christ teaches in 
the most absolute and universal terms, ' No man cometh to the 
Father but by me.' It is utterly subversive of all the teachings of 
Scripture to hold that a sinner can be baptized into the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost, without first being baptized into a crucified 
Redeemer. The Lord Jesus says, ' I am the way ; no man cometh 
to the Father but by me.' "Where remission of sins is, we have 
* boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new 

" This appeal to usage must settle the controversy, if anything can." 

Prof. Packard. 
" You are doing a great and good work, both for Scripture exegesis, and for 
settling on irrefragable grounds, the meaning of this long discussed word." 
Prof. B. M. Smith, Hampden Sydney College. 
" You have invested this discussion with fresh interest and increased light. 
Baptisma has not, in my judgment, any physical usage in the New Testament." 

Prof. J. W. Beecher, Auburn Theol. Sem. 
" I have marvelled at your patience in stopping against the 'immersionists ' 
every actual, probable, possible, imaginary, improbable, and impossible hole, 
and when you had proved a point ninety-nine times, still proving it the hun- 

dreth, lest your work be not quite complete." a Professor of Greek. 

" Ought to secure you the gratitude of the whole Christian Church." 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 107 

and living way ; having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, 
and our bodies washed with pure water.' Unto God in his holiness 
the sinner in his pollution cannot come. Unto God, in Christ, the 
4 Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,' the sinner, 
in all his guilt, may come, must come ! When the sinner has come 
to Christ — has been ' baptized into Him ' — ' baptized into the re- 
mission of sins ' — has been invested with His ' fulfilment of all 
righteousness,' then, and only then, is he prepared to be led by the 
Mediator between God and man, along the ' new and living way,' 
by which he can be received by God in His holiness, and be qualified 
for the ultimate baptism which is forever, even forever and ever, 
' into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy GhosV 

" Thus this wondrous baptism, which is the consummation of the 
work of redemption, is indissolubly joined with the baptism of the 
cross, and could have no existence without it. 

" Our general conclusion is, that all baptisms of the Bible, Old Testa- 
ment and New Testament, originate in, and are only to be expounded 
by the baptism of the cross, — the Lamb of God, spotless under temp- 
tation, suffering, drinking the cup, even unto death, to purify our 
souls and unite us to God." 

We will but add the 

Testimony of Wm. J. Allinson, 

for many years editor of the Friend's Review, Phila., Pa. He 
reasons thus : 

" This command (Matt, xxviii. 19) was very extensive, compre- 
hending all nations ; and all nations, save the Jews, were heathen, 
not having a true knowledge of Father, Son, or Spirit, of course, not 
of Triune Deity as expressed by this comprehensive phrase. Con- 
sidering the universality of the command, which included not merely 
the countries of Asia and Europe, but our undiscovered continent, 
and the shivering denizens of the frozen north and south, and those 
Central African regions which civilized foot even yet has never 
pressed ; considering this, and the wide range of meaning of the 
word baptize, is it a forced or unfair construction to infer that they 
were to teach all nations, introducing or initiating them, into a true 
knowledge of the true God ? An impossible command would not be 
given. A nation, as such, could not, in the ceremonial sense of the word, 
be baptized. It was not possible for those to whom the command 
was given, thus to reach and to dip or sprinkle each individual of 



108 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

each nation ; but -where man had penetrated before, some disciple^ 
led by the Spirit, might find his way, commissioned to sow seminal 
truth, and so to teach as to introduce, to initiate the knowledge of the 
living God, of his Son, of the Holy Spirit, and of the plan of salva- 
tion. . . It is popularly taken for granted that this word ' baptizing ■ 
is to be received in a ceremonial sense. " [Our Lord taught of moral, 
not physical things.] "Thus He calls himself 'the vine,' 'the 
door,' 'the bread of life,' etc.; and oft when He speaks of water ex- 
plains that He is not to be understood literally. TThen His words were 
too literally taken He shows His sense of the dulness of His hearers : 
'How is it that ye do not understand ? ' In the vague, indefinite 
literal sense of the word baptise, it may mean wash, purge, sprinkle, 
pour, immerse, stain, ornament, apply, overwhelm, etc., but in a 
theologic sense, it were rank heresy to deny the proposition that 
there is but ' one baptism.' \Vhat that is, and what it is not, we 
find clearly established ; and in the text under review, there is no 
naming of water. It were begging the question to place it there 
(if it were there I should claim for it its theologic sense) ; no com- 
mand to use any outward rite or type ; but the promise of the true 
Baptizer immediately follows : ' Lo, I am with you always,' etc.* 

* Xor is there in the New Testament a case of the use of the word baptizo, 
or baptize, with eis following, and this joined with water as the terminal ele- 
ment. Whether water he assumed to be an instrumental agent, or no, in any 
case, it is not that whereinto any one is said to be baptized. Take every case 
(every differing one) in the Xew Testament, and this will at once be seen : 

Matt. iii. 11, "Baptize (eis) into repentance." 

Mark i. 4, " Baptize (eis) into remission of sins." Also, Acts ii. 33. 

Matt, xxviii. 19, "Baptizing (eis) into the name of the Father." 

Acts viii. 16, " Baptized (eis) into the name of the Lord Jesus." 

Acts xix. 3, "Baptized, then, (eis) into what?" 

Acts xix. 3, "Baptized (eis) into John's baptism." 

Bom. vi. 3, " Baptized (eis) into Jesus Christ." 

Bom. vi. 3, " Baptized (eis) into his death." Also, Rom. vi. 4. 

1 Cor. i. 13, " Baptized (eis) into the name of Paul." 

1 Cor. i. 16, "Baptized (eis) into my own name." 

1 Cor. x. 2, "Baptized (eis) into Moses." 

1 Cor. xii. 13, "Baptized (eis) into one body." 

Gal. iii. 27. " Baptized (eis) into Christ." 

Mark, no Greek passage in the Xew Testament, or elsewhere, can be found 
which reads : 

i( Baptizo eis" (into) water. 

"Baptizo eis" (into) blood. 



WHAT IS CHEISTIAN BAPTISM ? 109 

" Then they are told to ' teach, baptizing ' (not teach and baptize as 
two distinct things), which must mean, preaching only under the 
Divine influence, the Holy Spirit, the One Baptism shall accompany 
the word preached, carrying it to the souls of the hearers with con- 
victing power, ' purifying their hearts by faith.' Teaching under 
holy inspiration was to be the Spirit's act through an instrument, 
and the 'One Baptism,' the Spirit's act direct, was to accompany, 
and unto God should be all the glory. . . . Peter, an apostle, was, 
by simultaneous revelation to himself and to Cornelius, required to 
go to a company of Gentiles and teach baptizingly. The words of 
his teaching were given to him by the Spirit, and the baptism was 
given to them by the Spirit. To confirm the fact so that there could 
be no gainsaying, it was visibly conferred. Peter told the Church 
the astonishing story : ' As I began to speak the Holy Ghost fell on 
them, as on us at the beginning. Then I remembered the w T ord of 
the Lord, how that he said, John, indeed, baptized with water, but 
ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.' What matters it to us, 
that Peter, not yet fully enfranchised from the old law, began to 
think of applying to them another baptism, which, in the efficacious 
sense, was no baptism at all ? The converts were Gentiles— con- 
verted to a new religion ; the Jews habitually marked every such 
step by a symbolic washing." [It was much that Peter could over- 
look their non-circumcision even ;] yet " placing them on a par with 
Jewish converts, he cried out, ' Who can forbid water, that these 
should not be purified (baptized), seeing they have received the 
Holy Ghost as well as we ? ' " 

A Christian Gentile might well ask, what is this that Peter 
now proposes to add to the purifying and anointing they had 
already received by the mighty effusion of the Holy Ghost ? 
But w r e may not continue this phase of the argument. 

" Baptizo eia " (into) wine. 

" Baptizo eh " (into) fire. 

" Baptizo eis" (into) tears. 

"Baptizo eis" (into) martyrdom, etc. 

Yet baptism by means of all these is oft found in Greek writers. 

The above are all the cases where baptizo is followed by eis, unless it be a 
repetend of these ; and it is perfectly evident that the rihial makes no appear- 
ance in most of them, either as to a human administrator, or a physical 
element; thus demonstrating that the term baptizo itself in no case determines 
either the agent or element employed. 



110 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 



The term Baptize comprehensive in Christ's day. 

He is a poor student of the Bible who has not come to see 
that in Christ's day the word baptize had attained a prolific 
sense, branching out as Ave have defined it (and as Dr. Dale 
its classic use ; see pp. 71-81) ; and that the agency is no more 
to be assumed to be water than it is to be assumed to be blood, 
or fire, or tears, or ashes, or the Holy Spirit. It would be 
more congruous with the New Testament aim to assume both 
water and baptism to be used in a spiritual sense, than the op- 
posite — yet the immediate theme and context must determine 
even this — largely judged, however, by the nature of things. 
Alexander Campbell is right when he says that baptize in the 
New Testament is synonymous with convert, regenerate, renew, 
sanctify, disciple, etc. But it must ever be understood in the 
moral, and not ceremonial sense, when thus synonymous. The 
baptized were those who had transferred their allegiance from 
Satan to Christ, and were received into the brotherhood of 
the pure, the sanctified. Material water, whether used or not, 
was wholly neutral in the matter. A ritual administrator, or 
a priestly interference had nothing to do with it ; but preach- 
ing Christ "with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," 
had all to do with it. 

He is, moreover, a poor student of the New Testament who 
does not see that therein the whole ritual, or ceremonial law 
of the Old Testament is set aside as cumbersome, and as a 
thing of nought to the Christian Church. And if any writer 
will point us to where a ritual law is re-established in the 
same Testament, marking its form and outline, to the intent 
that it may be practically apprehended as thus far from God 
and no farther, and just to what extent (when, where and 
how) the will of Christ, the Great Head of the Christian 
Church, would have us interested in it, we will meekly and 
thankfully sit at his feet and learn. But the New Testament 
law, to meet our conception of law, must not continue to leave 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? Ill 

the subject, both in the main point, and in its adjuncts, in a 
labyrinth of conjecture.* 

HOW WRITERS STUMBLE— REV. E. B. TURNER CRITICISED. 

As a specimen of how men reason well and reason ill on 
the subject of rituals, or a ritual law, so that like the snake, 
you cannot tell whether he is " going out or coming back," I 
Avill quote a few sentences from a discourse of Rev. E. B. 
Turner, formerly pastor of Congregational Church, Morris, Ills. 
The theme he entitles, " Forms not Religion." He makes out 
his case well, but for the blundering and inconsistent admis- 
sions silted in far too oft. He affirms correctly that the Jew- 
ish converts to Christ were ever disposed to manifest an un- 
yielding and bigoted spirit toward the Gentiles, and that 



* Ritualists say respecting baptism, " God commands us to perform an act, 
a well-defined act, i. e., to dip or plunge." Dale asks, " which, dip, or plunge ?" 
To plunge leaves the body immersed — to dip, the opposite — removing the 
body again from the element into which it was plunged. But emersion is not 
in the meaning of the word plunge or merse, as Dr. Conant admits. Now, is 
that the act that God commands to be performed upon all believers ? — sad 
doom, as the reward of the simplicity of faith ! — or, simply to have the convert 
dipped into water, or sprinkled with water, — is that the highest thought (or 
faought at all) of the "High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity ?" If 
baptism ever symbolized purification, or was simply the public act of conse- 
cration or profession of faith, which is it that God seeks, the real purification, or 
symbol ? The real consecration or the outward expression of it in an act, that 
the hypocrite can perform as well as the Christian ? Is not the baptism of tears, 
i. e... of repentance, to be succeeded by the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, 
sufficient ? The baptism of tears (repentance)^Mr?ytes. The baptism of the Holy 
Spirit really purifies. The baptism of fire (suffering and martyrdom) purifies. 
'' Resisting unto blood against sin," i. e., baptism of blood, purifies. Water bap- 
tism, at best, is the weakest and least efficacious of any of them, and utterly worth- 
loss without the others as adjuncts. Why need the ceremony and the substance 
both? It is like a man carrying a candle, that shone well at night, along with 
him into the noonday sunlight. Does God ask you to keep the candle after the 
sunlight has come? Then the Romish farce of burning candles by day may 
please Him ? God told Moses to purify the priests of Israel — a definite act — 
and to build a tabernacle in the wilderness for them — every act definite ; is that 
the tabernacle, and are those the purifications (baptisms) of to-day? "Tell 
me ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law ? " Gal. iv. 21. 



112 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

mainly with respect to their observance of the Mosaic rites. 
And he adds (p 3) : 

" This tendency to lay great stress on the outward forms of religion . . . has 
existed in every age. The ranks of Christ's followers have in every age been 
rent asunder by strife and contention, and her strength greatly weakened by 
it. ... Under the Jewish dispensatioo, religion was embodied in forms. . . . 
Though they were but types and shadows, they had all the importance of 
things essential and real until the great antitype should appear." 

This is altogether too legal a view of the case. But mark 
what follows : 

" Since these have had their fufilment in the coming of the Messiah, they 
have lost their significance and importance. All that remains of them are the 
essential truths which they shadow forth. No part of the Mosaic religion was 
designed to be perpetuated but its principles. Her forms and ceremonies having 
now become of no importance, have become obsolete. . . . The entire absence 
of any prescribed forms in the New Testament indicate it. If any particular 
external modes of exemplifying and perpetuating the doctrines of the Gospel 
had been designed, would they not have been the subject of express instruc- 
tion ? Of what use are principles, which cannot, through defect of the means 
of applying them, be made of practical utility ? And if any fixed forms were 
intended to be established, and to be made perpetual in all countries and ages, 
is it probable that we should be left without any written formularies on the 
subject? Who will undertake to show that there are any such formularies in 
the New Testament? Who will say that they are so clearly defined that 'he 
who runneth may read?'" 

Thus far this writer reasons well. But read the next sen- 
tence : 

" The various duties of religion are those (in the New Testament) enjoined, 
and certain ordinances are made obligatory, but where are the prescribed 
forms of worship ? " 

Now, does not this writer see that the everlasting incerti- 
tude, the bone of contention, the apple of discord, is thrown 
into this one short sentence ? What has been the bone of 
contention in all ages but ordinances ? And if ordinances 
are " made obligatory," then let this writer give the form and 
outline, lest all he says about indefiniteness come against him- 
self. Moses was very specific in outlining " ordinances." He 
adds : 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 113 

" So far as He (Christ) observed any rites or ceremonies, He conformed to 
the customs of the country, without even suggesting any alterations or setting 
up any peculiar forms of his own." 

Very good ! Then He took the ceremonial law as He found 
it — as we have before said ; and made no changes in it, and 
said nothing about establishing any other. The writer still 
continues : 

" We find no prescribed forms in the teachings of the Apostles and the prac- 
tice of the primitive churches. . . .Churches were formed in places remote 
from one another, and composed of individuals of diverse habits and education. 
Converts were received into the Church, wherever and whenever they gave 
evidence of a change of heart." 

All good : but see the ritualism that is still in the mind of 
this writer crop out ; read on : 

"The rites of religion were administered in various places and evidently in 
various ways" [and why not add: or left unadministered ?]. " They were bap- 
tized in the house and out of it, by the river side and the running brook, 
where there was ' much water' and where ' there was no water/ " [Sure !] 

He adds : 

" Let any one undertake to find the prescribed mode in so many words, and 
he will soon be convinced that all this hue and cry about forms has not the 
slightest encouragement in the Bible." 

But, my brother, if God commands the forms, and makes 
them " obligatory," then the " hue and cry" has a large 
amount of "encouragement in the Bible," and the question as 
to the mode is ever made a very important one. We have 
not in this way got rid of the strifes about the " law" (ritual 
law), in the least degree. We have not moved one step to- 
ward it. What one says is baptism, for example, or the 
eucharist, another says is not. Thus the question is forever 
to be mooted. 

See the writer's inconsistency in the following sentence by 
itself: 

"It (the Bible) requires every individual to repent and be baptized, but 
prescribes no form." 

Is not the baptism the writer alludes to here, a " form ? " 



114 BITUALISM DETHEOXED. 

He does not allude to a moral or spiritual baptism ; albeit, we 
have no doubt Christ does, in the passages whence this writer 
infers his duty of observing the form. 

Such concessions to a ritual, Judaic law, weaken the whole 
fabric of this discourse. It puts the convert to Christ, in every 
instance, on the inquiry as to how that requirement is to be 
met. It must be so, if he would intelligently obey. Hence the 
whole question as between Baptists and Pedo-Baptists, and 
other ritualists, comes up continually ; and no answer can be 
given unless you go back to the old Jewish law, and assume it 
to be still in force. In concludiDg our strictures upon this 
writer, we only ask why did he not apply his own rule, when 
he says, on p. 14 : 

" Whatever principles you find revealed in the Scriptures, adhere to with all 
firmness; do not consider the practices of Christ or his disciples as necessarily 
of binding force, unless they are accompanied with an express precept. When 
you find a 'thus saith the Lord' for any particular mode, then accept it, and 
submit to it with all honesty. But, where God has not spoken, do not do in- 
justice to your own minds, nor degrade the cause of our holy religion by striv- 
ing to make yourselves wiser than the Scriptures. While you have your 
own opinion as to the particular forms, etc., be willing that others should 
enjoy theirs. Let no contracted or bigoted spirit keep your sympathies and 
affections within the pale of a single sect: adopt no theories that will prevent 
others from the cordial reciprocation of your Christian affection. Remember 
that the kingkom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, 
and joy in the Holy Ghost." 

Very well put, brother ! So Paul exhorted both the Jew- 
ish and Gentile converts when he tore in pieces and set aside 
the Jewish ritual law. 

New Testament Record merely historical. 

"We are now prepared to continue our exhibit of the manner 
the subject of baptism has been introduced into the New 
Testament. We discover it to be, as before stated, only his- 
torically, without any pre-existing New Testament law on the 
subject; which also shows that if afterward it were erected into 
the form of law it would be but an ex post facto law — as our 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 115 

lawyers term it — in John's case, and therefore would not, by 
any means, prove a special divine appointment of this rite for 
the New Testament. 

To prove that John had a divine command to baptize (save 
such as the Jewish priests all had), is not possible ; to prove a 
New Testament law on the subject, that law must have been 
revealed to men. When Jesus asks the Jews, therefore, as to 
the baptism of John, whether it were "from heaven or of men? " 
he only refers to his ministration, or his heralding of the 
Messiah, and pre-announcement of Christ's immediate coming 
and work. 

John came as a purifier (reformer) to herald the coming of 
Christ, to prepare the hearts of multitudes to receive Christ 
by turning their attention to Him, and consecrating them tc 
Him — using only the forms of purifying the priesthood were 
then using. 

John was a priest of the law, and the son of a priest. His 
father Zechariah was a priest of the " course of Abia" (Luke 
i. 5), and John was therefore executing his office in due order. 
True he was a great reformer, and preacher of repentance 
with unusual unction and demonstration of the Spirit, as Sam- 
uel and Elijah, and Jeremiah and Malachi had been before 
him. But John, and even Christ, whose work succeeded 
John's in point of time, mainly, were both "made under the 
law," as Paul says in Gal. iv. 4. True, Christ tells us that the 
" law and the prophets were until John," since then " the 
kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." 
But Daniel and Zechariah preached also the kingdom of God ; 
while John preached it only as " at hand," even as did Christ in 
all his labors before His crucifixion. The "vail of the temple" 
and the vail of the law were rent asunder in Christ's cruci- 
fixion ; so theologians generally tell us : (see 2 Cor. iii.). In 
every record or notice of John's ministry, therefore, we may 
expect to find the term baptism or baptize used in the sense of 
purify; when the allusion is made to the symbolic baptism of 
water, just as the antitype baptism of the Spirit really purifies. 



116 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

So, by the context, we shall see the word will bear to be ren- 
dered in each case. 

Let us, then, quote the New Testament record giving the 
word the rendering that the context and the subject matter in 
each case seem to require, yet transcribing baptize untrans- 
lated where no word in English will render it. (Matt, iii.) 

" In those days came John the Purifier, preaching in the wilderness of 
JuJea, and saying : Kepent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand . . . 
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight . . . Then went out to 
him Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were 
purified of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. But, when he saw many of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees come to his purifying, he said unto them, generation 
of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ? Bring forth, 
therefore, fruits meet for repentance I" [i. e. put away your sins; for this bap- 
tism of water but symbolizes that purifying which you need.] "I, indeed, puni/y 
you with water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than 
I, whose shoes I am not worthy (not pure enough) to bear. He shall purify 
you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." [The Holy Spirit and fire are mighty 
purifying elements.] " Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thjoughly purge 
his floor, etc." [Thus the idea of purifying by various terms is kept up by 
the context.] " Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be 
purified of him. But John forbade him, saying ; I have need to be purified 
by thee, and comest thou to me ? And Jesus answering said unto him : Suffer 
it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suf- 
fered him. And Jesus, when he was purified, went up straightway out of the 
water. . . . And lo. a voice from heaven, saying : This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased." 

Thus the purifying and consecration of Christ to the 
priesthood by John, gave Christ the legal authority He needed 
to be acceptable to the Jews ; and Christ now, also, received 
heaven's signet, by the sealing power of the Holy Spirit being 
shed freely and " without measure" upon Him. 

The above record is rehearsed in the other evangelists more 
or less fully of course, with no differing sense of the term bap- 
tism or its cognates. It may simply be said that, in each case, 
referring to John or his work, where "John the Baptist" is 
found, it should be rendered John the Purifier ; and the baptism 
of John should be the purifying or preaching of John. 

In Matt xx. 22, Mark x. 38, 39, and Luke xii. 50, Jesus 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 117 

uses the term baptism evidently more fully in the sacrificial 
sense (as Dr. Beecher deems it), to suffer or to be whelmed 
with suffering, alluding to the coming agony of the cross, and 
the climax of the work of atonement. Christ replies to the 
woman that asked great honor for her sons : "Are ye able to 
drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized 
with the baptism that I am baptized with ? " "We may render 
the answer, (and of course the same word in the question, 
also) thus : "Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be whelmed 
with the anguish that I am whelmed with." Jesus in both 
question and reply assuredly alludes to that hour when His 
soul should be overwhelmed with anguish, as in Gethsemane ; 
and also when on the cross, His body should be crushed to 
death with the inward anguish of the soul, consequent on the 
hidings of His Father's face, and the tortures men were allowed 
to inflict upon His body. No moral effect (as purifying) was 
needed in His case, but it was endured for others' purifying ; 
and hence, the sacrificial idea is conveyed, and Christ longs to 
endure it for others' sakes. 

The earliest use of the Greek word baptizo did convey the 
sense of whelm, merge, inundate, or submerge under some 
overpowering influence that should end one condition, estate 
or interest by merging it into another ; hence, as we shall see, 
comes the highest Christian sense of the phrase to baptize into 
Christ. But as moral purification is the result of this, and 
also is needful to stand in God's favor; and, as the external and 
internal purifying harmonize in the generic idea, Jewish 
writers call the Jewish rites of cleansing by the symbolic term 
purify. These Jewish purifications were seldom or never by 
whelming or immersing the object to be purified in water, but 
by some form of washing, sprinkling or ablution. The Greeks, 
in their religious rites, did more oft immerse.* 

* Yet Socrates, the Greek philosopher, 400 years before Christ, speaks of " a 
celebrated font, out of which water is poured from above on the baptized 
person." 






118 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

If, then, you make immersion, as a religious rite, antedate 
Christ's day, you make it of heathen origin; and Dr. Robinson, 
the Baptist historian, says that all the ancient nations baptized 
and had baptisteries for that purpose. No Christian of our 
day will contend for the transfer of the whole Mosaic ritual 
to the Christian dispensation ; yet all Pedo-Baptists are prac- 
tising their baptisms after the model of certain parts of the 
Mosaic ritual ; and the Baptist churches, after a model that 
the Mosaic ritual will allow, yet really of Gentile origin. 
When we find nearly or quite all those that practised immer- 
sion in the third century after Christ using almost invariably 
trine immersion, and almost invariably baptizing the candi- 
dates naked, we see that much of their baptismal ceremony 
must have come from the heathen nations. Nor did Jesus 
adopt and institute by law the heathen baptisms — or the Jewish 
even. 

To be followers of Christ, is not, as we have seen, to mimic 
any bodily act of His, or any ceremonial of that age — such a 
conceit is infinitely unworthy and degrading — but it is to love 
as He loved, and to possess the spirit of God as He possessed it. 
John the symbolic purifier makes a clear distinction between 
his own symbolic and Christ's real purification. 

Are we to suppose that Christ annulled this distinction, and 
re-entailed on His Church John's baptism ; or one that, in the 
nature of things, could be no better — being also a ritual, but 
only called by another name ? Christ gave us many hints that 
He would set aside the Jewish economy, rituals and all ; and 
Paul abundantly teaches us that He did. (See Letters to Pres. 
Finney, Letter viii.) 

Paul taught in direct precept, on this subject, what Christ 
only taught in principle. Christ's words mean much when He 
says (John xvi. 12): "I have many things to say unto 
you, but ye cannot bear them now." After His crucifixion 
and ascension, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, they could 
much better understand the spiritual things of the New Cove- 
nant (even its baptism) than they could while Christ was with 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 119 

theni in body, and under the Jewish law. But He gave them 
clear hints that Judaism would pass away when He says : 

"The hour is coming, when neither in this mountain (of Samaria), nor at 
Jerusalem shall men worship tho Father, . . . but the hour cometh when tho 
true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth j for the 
Father seeketh such to worship Him." — John iv. 21-23. 

So also when He says: 

" The flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I speak unto you, they are 
spirit and they are life." 

In such passages Jesus teaches the spiritual vs. the ritual 
nature of the New Dispensation. 

Jesus never practised ritual baptism, i. e., never administered 
it, as Moses did and, Dr. D. says, never used the word baptize 
or baptism in a ritual sense. Christ was Priest of the " true tab- 
ernacle," Paul says in Hebrews ix., and the Mediator of the 
New Covenant " written in the heart," not in types and sym- 
bols, nor on tables of stone. His baptism is doubtless in 
harmony with His priesthood, as was that of Moses. The 
word baptlzo itself, according to Dr. E. Beecher and A. Camp- 
bell, being synonymous (see "Synonyms of Baptism") with 
purify, sanctify, regenerate, convert, cleanse, renew, etc, we 
may more fitly give the moral sense to the word as used by 
our Saviour, than the ritual one. 

How Christ used the term Baptism. 

Christ alludes to John's baptism (referring to his doctrine), 
in some instances, and to John himself as a great prophet, 
but pronounces the "least in the kingdom of heaven greater 
than he;" and the first mention He makes of baptism as ap- 
plying to himself, He uses it in the non-physical sense : "I 
have a baptism to be baptized with," etc., alluding to His ap- 
proaching sufferings. 

Then, when He comes to give the Great Commission, shall 
we consider the High Priest of the New Covenant as giving 
it in words that establish a ritual law, or rather in words that 
are in full harmony with the nature of that New Covenant? 



120 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Shall we understand Jesus as saying, Mark xvi. 16 : " He 
that believeth and is (symbolically) purified, shall be saved :" 
or, " He that believeth and is purified, shall be saved ? " We, 
without hesitation, cleave to the latter sense. So in Matt, 
xxviii. 19 — why not read it : " Go and teach all nations, puri- 
fying them in the name" (or inducting them into the name) 
" of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost?" * This makes the bap- 
tism required harmonize with the New Dispensation, and the 
real work of the Church. Also, with the Commission as re- 
corded by the other evangelists. Luke has it (Luke xxiv. 47) : 
" That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in 
his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." 

John has it (John xx. 23) : " Whose soever sins ye remit 
they are remitted unto them, and whose soever sins ye retain 
they are retained." And this last He said, after He had 
breathed on them, and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost." 

This gives us the clue to the use of the term baptism, so oft 
found in connection with " remission of sins," or " washing away 
sins," in other parts of the New Testament. The fulness of 
meaning of the terms remission, baptism, etc., in the Commission, 
precludes the idea of the institution of a ritual law in the case; 
they are certainly susceptible of the sense we give them : this 
forbids their being used as proof texts by the ritualists. Paul 
surely understood the Commission simply in the moral, and 
not ritual sense, when he says, " Christ sent me not to baptize" 
(alluding to the Judaizing ritualists), " but to preach the 
Gospel." To abbreviate this New Testament record of the use 
and meaning of the term baptism and its cognates, we will 
merely cite passages, rendering the word, in each case, in ac- 
cordance with our previous definitions, as seems in each par- 
ticular case to be demanded. Of the one hundred times and 
more that the term baptism with its cognates is found in the 

* Regenerate into the name of the Father, etc., would be still more forcible. 
The Son is generated into the name of His Father: we are regenerated into 
the name of God the Father, etc., and thus become "sons of God," "brethren" 
to Christ, and in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 121 

New Testament, over fifty times it refers specifically to John's 
baptism by name, and the import of this has been elicited. 
Of the remaining instances of its use, more than one half of 
them permit the moral or spiritual sense only; and in other 
cases, the moral sense is at least allowable, as by the use of 
baptwma the moral sense is indicated. Of course, in all the 
instances where the baptism of the Holy Ghost is alluded to, 
it must have the moral and not the ritual sense; and the New 
Testament usage permits the moral sense in many other cases, 
where ritualists have failed to so apprehend it. Let the 
reader, then, in harmony with the New Dispensation, give 
the underlying moral sense when he can, and the ritual only 
when he must, to the following passages found in the Acts 
and Epistles. 

The term "Baptizo" exegetically translated. 

Acts i. 5. "John truly purified with water, but ye shall be purified with the 
Holy Ghost." 

Acts ii. 38. "Repent and be baptized (or converted, see Acts iii. 19) every 
one of you, (epi) upon (the authority of) the name of Jesus Christ, (eis) into the 
remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." 

Acts ii. 41. " Then they that gladly received the word were sealed." 

Acts viii. 12. " When they believed Philip preaching the things concerning 
the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were discipled f both 
men and women." 

Acts ix. 18. "And (Saul) arose and was purified (or cleansed)." 

Acts x. 47, 48. "Who can forbid water, that these should not be purified? 
. . . And he commanded them to be purified in the name of the Lord." 

Act xvi. 15. " When she (Lydia) tous purified and her household." .... 
33d verse. "And (the jailer) was purified, he and all his, straightway." 

Acts xviii. S. " Many Corinthians hearing, believed and were purified." 

Acts xix. 2-5. "He said unto them: Have ye received the Holy Ghost 
since ye believed?" "Unto what then were ye converted? And they said, 
Unto John's baptism. Then said Paul, John verily purified with the puri- 
fication of repentance," etc. 5th verse : " When they beard this, they were bap- 
tized into (consecrated to) the name (or cause) of the Lord Jesus." 

Acts xxii. 16. " Arise and he purified, and wash away thy sins." 

Thus far (in Acts) we appear to have but the Judaizing re- 
cord ; save the passage, Acts ii. 38 ; xix. 2-5, these all probably 
refer to the persistent Judaizing custom of the apostles, Ananias 



122 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

etc. They all, being Jews, kept up the Jewish baptisms and 
feasts, to this last date, except Paul when among the Gentiles. 
Paul (Gal. ii.) rebuked Peter (not for conforming to Jewish 
customs among the Jews — he did himself, and got into trou- 
ble by it), but he rebukes Peter, Barnabas, etc., for compel- 
ling the Gentiles to turn Jews. And in the Epistles, Paul and 
all the other apostles seem to have laid aside their Judaism, 
and thrown off the yoke of ritual bondage without restriction 
or disguise. Baptism now becomes internal, or spiritual, else it 
is repressed. 

The Epistles all Anti-ritualistic. 

Rom. vi. 3. " Know ye not that so many of us as were merged into Jesus 
Christ were merged into his death." 4th verse. " Thererefore we are buried 
with him by (the) merging into his death." 

1 Cor. i. 13. " Were ye discipled into the name of Paul?" 14th and 16th 
verses. " I thank God that I (ritually) purified none of you save Crispus and 
Gaius and the household of Stephanus; besides I know not whether I purified 
any other." 17th verse. "For Christ sent me not to purify (ritually), but to 
preach the Gospel." t 

1 Cor. x. 1, 2. " All our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through 
the sea ; And were all consecrated to Moses in the cloud and in the sea." 

1 Cor. xii. 13. " For by one Spirit are we all merged into one body." 

1 Cor. xv. 29. " Else what shall they do who are consecrated for the dead, if 
the dead rise not ? why are they then consecrated for the dead ?" 

Gal. iii. 26, 27. " For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ 
Jesus : For as many of you as have been inducted into Christ have put on 
Christ." 

Eph. iv. 4, 5. " There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are called in 
one hope of your calling ; one Lord, one faith, one anointing" (or one sancti- 
fication). 

Col. ii. 12. " Buried with him (Christ) by induction" (or union with Christ), 
"wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of 
God." 

Heb. vi. 1, 2. " Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, 
let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance 
from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of clean sings," etc. 

1 Pet. iii. 21. " The like antitype whereunto purifying doth also now save 
us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good 
conscience toward God." 

Thus it will be seen that unless we shrink from giving to 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN BAPTISM? 123 

Christ's words in the Great Commission the very sense which 
that commission requires, viz., the purifying of the nations, 
and turning mair from sin to righteousness, and shrink from 
making Peter's two forms of address to the listening Jews, 
" Repent and be baptized" and " repent and be converted" as 
found in Acts ii. 38, and iii. 19, synonymous, we have no sem- 
blance of a command for any baptismal rite in the New Testa- 
ment. And let it be noted, that, having passed the book of Acts 
in the New Testament canon, we do not find a single text favor- 
ing ritual baptism, but an invariable disapproval; at the same 
time, ever bringing into view that true spiritual baptism by 
which we are inducted into and united with Christ and with 
all his people. Neither John, nor James, nor Jude, in their 
epistles, uses the term baptizo at all, and Paul and Peter use it 
in any form than either commanding or commending a 
ritual baptism. Hear Paul : " God sent me not to baptize, 
but to preach the Gospel." "One Lord, one faith, one bap- 
tism." "Leaving, therefore, . . . the doctrine of baptisms." 
" Divers baptisms imposed until the time of reformation." 

And Peter: " Baptism doth also now save us, not the putting 
away of the filth of the flesh," etc. Peter had come to com- 
prehend the forerunner John's meaning, and the superior 
excellence of the internal above the external baptism, when he 
said, " I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to 
me ? " And what Christ meant when he said, " He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved." And what Paul 
meant when he said, " By one Spirit are we all baptized into 
one body." We have cited nearly or quite all the allusions 
to water-baptism found in the epistles, and they certainly are 
not very loyal to the Great Commission, if that commission 
refers to a ritual baptism. 

Then note the continual pointing from the letter (the form) 
to the spirit, i. e., that which is spiritual in all the New Testa- 
ment, marking as now only to be spiritual that which had 
been in the " letter," £he form, the ritual before. "That is not 
circumcision which is outward in the flesh. Circumcision is 



124 EITUALISM DETHKONED. 

tliat of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter ; whose 
praise is not of men, but of God." "Circumcision availeth 
nothing, nor uncircumcision, but" [What ? the waters of bap- 
tism ? Nay ! ] " a new creature." " We are the circumcision 
who worship God in the spirit, and have no confidence in the 
flesh" " Who hath made us able ministers of the New Testa- 
ment—not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, 
but the spirit giveth life." " How shall not the ministration 
of the spirit be rather glorious." 

James, the great apostle of the Jews, abiding at Jerusalem, 
says : " Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, 
ye double-minded." And John, the beloved disciple, reiter- 
ates : " The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from 
all unrighteousness;" [not the rite of baptism.] And he adds: 
" Love is of God, and every one that loveth is bom of God and 
knoweth God." 

Is any one disposed to inquire why, in the record given by 
Luke (in Acts) of the labors of the apostles and early Chris- 
tian evangelists, ritual baptism appears in several instances? 
The answer is, the Jewish garb (the swaddling band of 
Christianity) was laid aside slowly — not at all until the pres- 
sure of the non- Jewish customs of converted Gentiles began to 
bear hard against that which was distinctively Jewish. 

If any thing can be proved by historic evidence, it can be 
proved that Moses established Jewish baptism, and that, 
especially, all proselytes from the heathen were baptized (puri- 
fied), with their households, on reception into the synagogue. 
This is the origin of " household baptism," and " infant bap- 
tism." Keeping this in mind, we may harmonize those state- 
ments of the Fathers, as Augustine, who states that infant 
baptism was an " apostolic tradition," and Pelagius, who says 
that he had never heard of any that opposed it; with the state- 
ment of Neander (oft) that infant baptism w T as but little 
practised in the Christian Church for three or four centuries 
after Christ. The Gentile Churches did not adopt it for several 
centuries ; the Jewish (i. e. the Judaizers) kept it up through 



WHAT IS CHKISTIAN BAPTISM? 125 

all this period, and finally carried with them the Koman, and 
at length the Greek Church. 

So, ceremonially, from Moses down to Christ (even until 
now) the Jews baptized themselves, old and young, to purge 
from ceremonial uncleannesses. And nothing is clearer than 
that these purifyings are not only not commanded but repressed 
in all the Epistles. The Council at Jerusalem, noticed in Acts 
xv., bound no baptismal ceremony upon the Gentiles, and 
from that day, as before, Paul specially dissuaded them from 
it. And if Neander may be accredited, no yoke of bondage 
to a ritual law would have prevailed, but for the inroads 
of the Judaizers. The apostles (even Paul himself) when 
among Jews, kept the ceremonies, the feasts, Passover, Pente- 
cost, etc. : See Acts xvi. 3, xviii. 21, xix. 21, xx. 16, xxi. 26, 
xxv. 8. But the Gentile Churches were left at liberty touch- 
ing the whole ceremonial law. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RITUALISM 
AND NON-RITUALISM. 

Confusion of the Ritualists — A Hidden Record 
Revealed. 

THUS do we perceive the ritual baptism was continually 
waning ("decreasing," as John says), and passing 
out of sight, from the days of John, the ritual purifier, 
unto the end of the New Testament canon. Paul, in Romans, 
1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians, brings 
to view the spiritual or moral purifying and renovation by the 
sanctifying and uniting power of the spiritual baptism almost 
exclusively. He also, as in 1 Cor. i., and Heb. vi., protests 
against giving attention to, or going back to queryings about 
the ritual baptism, saying, he was not " sent to baptize," or to 
give attention to this matter ; and hence urged the churches 
to " leave " these " rudiments " (principles), and go on unto 
spiritual perfection. Peter does the same, turning their 
attention from the baptism that purifies " the flesh," to that 
which secures the answer of a good conscience toward God, 
" by the resurrection of Jesus Christ," i. e. by Christ working 
in them in His resurrection power. 

Shall we assume that Christ had more " confidence in the 
flesh," and less in the spiritual baptism, than these apostles, 
when after His resurrection He gave the Great Commission ? 
And did Paul when he declares he was not sent to baptize (as 
a Jew), but to preach (as a Christian), and when he affirms 
there is but " one baptism," fail to apprehend the mind of 
126 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 127 

Christ on the subject ? We think not. Who thinks other- 



wise ? 

It is no proof that Christ instituted a ritual law, because, 
forsooth, a ritual law has been assumed by successive genera- 
tions of Judaizers, even from the days of the Levitical priest- 
hood. Who has fully noted and admitted the " change of the 
priesthood," and the " change of the law," which Paul an- 
nounces in Hebrews 7th to 10th chapters? 

What is not Proof. 

It is no proof that ritual baptism is a seal of the New 
Covenant, because the doctrine of ritual baptism was pressed 
to the full extent of the dogma of baptismal regeneration ; 
and was thus accepted by some of the leading "bishops" of 
the Church in the third and fourth centuries. It is rather 
against the claim of the ritualists, just as the sacramen- 
tarian trust of the Coptic, Armenian, Greek, Roman, and 
Anglican churches is to-day. It is no argument in favor of 
ritual baptism that the historians of the Church have been 
ritualists to the extent that they have well-nigh ignored, and 
kept from our view the anti-ritualists of the early ages, 
and, as far as practicable, of the succeeding ages. 

When they omit to name them, or to write their record, 
they but do as High Churchmen of our day do toward the 
Low Church, as we have seen, and as other Dissenters treat 
the Society of Friends. But let it not be assumed for this 
cause that all the Church, in all ages, have been ritualists, 
helping on the feuds that have constantly arisen as to a thou- 
sand forms, or aims, or adjuncts of water-baptism. Nay, the 
more than a thousand differing theories respecting water-bap- 
tism that have arisen, and rent the Church into shreds, is no 
proof of the divine appointment of such baptism ; it would 
impeach the divine wisdom and benevolence to assume it. 
And the fact that ritualists have doated on calling the anti- 
ritualists (anti-baptizers) heretics, is no proof that they were 
heretics — or were not the most holy and exemplary Christians 



128 EITUALISM DETHEOXED. 

of earth — no more than the book written by the recanting or 
apostatizing Quaker, Samuel Hanson Cox, entitled " Quakerism 
not Christianity," is a proof that the church or society thus 
opposed was not the most spiritual and benevolent church, 
and the most Christ-like that existed at that day, and equal 
to any the earth has seen. 

We would very cheerfully compare the life of a George 
Fox or William Penn, early Quakers, with Rev. S. H. Cox, 
or Macaulay, their vilifiers. Weighed in the balances, the 
critic and judge, and many of their compeers, would illy 
stand the test with said Fox and Penn, and many of their 
compeers. 

And so we may trace back the record to early ages. Our 
record cannot be complete, because of the unfaithfulness of 
historians (through theological prejudice), as we said ; but we 
can present a record never yet grouped, that we are not 
ashamed to compare with the High Church Ritualistic record, 
— and which, if it could be made complete, we doubt not, 
would present before us the brightest phase of the Church's 
piety in the ages long since past — as the Society of Friends 
presented by far the brightest phase of the Church 7 s piety in 
the seventeenth century. 

Record of Anti-ritualism. 

We have found Christ foretelling, and Paul and Peter pro- 
claiming the passing away of the Judaic ritual law — Paul 
especially in numerous and varied phrases. And the question 
arises, was this testimony against an exotic ritualism kept up 
in the churches ? Especially during the great backsliding, 
when a ritualistic trust became the idolatry and bane of the 
Church. Neander has most fully and frankly given us the 
record on this subject. We will quote from this author freely, 
and from others as we may. 

But keep in mind the difficulties that are to throng our 
path. It has not been popular to give the history of dissent 
from the most prevalent faith, as the history of the true 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 129 

Church, yet oft has the history of such dissent been the only 
correct history of the true Church. But popular church his- 
tory has full oft been only a history of organizations and 
rituals, of baptisms and Judaisms perpetuated, of tilts and 
bulls of bishops and popes against schismatics and heretics, 
which schismatics and heretics were simply endeavoring 
faithfully to serve God and their generation without leave or 
instruction from said bishops and popes, and without owning 
any allegiance to them. The history of protest and dissent has 
usually been the true history of Christianity from the days of 
our Lord's dissent from the Pharisees and Scribes, to the 
Dissenters and Protestants of England and America. 

A Vacuum in Ritualistic History. 

Leaving the New Testament record with the filling of the 
canon (where in all the epistles, we find not one word of 
approval either of water-baptism or any other Jewish ritual), 
we are ushered into the succeeding history of the Church. 
And, ah, what a vacuum do we here find, impossible to be 
filled by the ritualists, with all their assiduity of research and 
inquiry. Alexander Campbell, the great ritualistic champion 
of immersion and of salvation thereby, affirms that : 

" Having closely and repeatedly examined the epistles of Clement, of 
Polycarp to the Philippians, of Ignatius to the Ephesians, and to the Magne- 
sians, that to the Gratians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, the Smyrnians, 
and his epistle to Polycarp, and the catholic epistle of Barnabas, and the 
genuine works of Hennas," he finds only two passages in all these that speak 
of baptism, and then only by allusion, in other words, not one of them using the 
term baptizo or baptisma in a single instance. 

This carries us to the year A. d. 140. Justin Martyr, in 
the year 140, in an apology addressed to Antoninus Pius, is 
represented as saying of the Christian teachers and their con- 
verts : " We also pray and fast together with them ; then we 
bring them to some place where there is water, and they are 
regenerated in the same way by which we were regenerated, 
for they are washed with water" etc. This, perhaps, is the first 
9 



130 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

allusion to ritual baptism after the canon of Scripture (the 
Acts of the Apostles) ; and here the term baptize is not used for 
wash, but the Greek word loutron, meaning to lave, or purify* 
So Mr. Campbell cannot find immersion, nor scarce an allusion 
to baptism, in any of the earliest Christian Fathers.f And 
Nearider cannot find infant baptism for about three centuries 
after Christ.J Well, between the two arch-champions of the 
historical evidences, is it not probable that water-baptism it- 
self was very little thought of, and, heeding Paul's instructions, 
very little practised ? They had been brought out from the 
Judaic wilderness, and were not yet ready for any cause to 
plunge into it again. Their version of the GREAT COM- 
MISSION must have essentially differed from the current 
modern one. 

Let Neander explain this matter. He says (vol. i. p. 
194): 

"Christianity having sprung to freedom out of the envelop of Judaism, had 
stripped off the forms in xchich it was first concealed. . . . This evolution be- 
longed more particularly to the Pauline position, from which proceeded the 
form of the Church in the Pagan world. This principle had triumphantly 
pushed its way through in the conflict with the Jewish elements, which opposed 
themselves to the practical development of Christianity. In the communities 
of Pagan Christians the new creation stood forth completely unfolded; but the 
Jewish principle ichich had been vanquished, pressed in once more from another 
quarter. Humanity was as yet incapable of maintaining itself at that lofty 
position of pure spiritual religion. The Jewish position descended nearer 
to the mass, who needed first te be trained " (i. e. in rituals), " in order to 
the apprehension of a pure Christianity ! Out of Christianity, now become 
independent, a principle once more sprang forth akin to the Old Testament 



* As Justin Martyr was altogether a non-ritualist (see " Chronicles of 
Non-Ritualists"), it is somewhat doubtful whether he penned the above. The 
words " regenerate " and " wash," used in a seemingly ritualistic sense, is 
wholly Jewish in style, and this passage may have been foisted into Justin's 
writings by some Judaizer, as many other things were. 

t For a period of seventy years from the death of all the apostles, save John, 
and of about forty years from the death of the Apostle John. This dlence of the 
Fathers is as significant a rebuke of the ritual baptizers, as any words could 
possibly be. 

% i. e., it was not common, he avers. 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 131 

position — a new making outward of the kingdom of God — a new law discipline — 
a new tutorship of the spirit of humanity " (t. e. putting new wine in old bottles 
again), " until it should arrive at the maturity of a manly age in Christ. This 
retrogression of the Christian spirit to a form nearly related to the Old Testa- 
ment position, could not fail, after the fruitful principle had once made its ap- 
pearance, to unfold itself more and more." 

Thus Neander proceeds to trace the introduction of church 
forms modelled after the Jewish ritual and priesthood, with 
high priests and bishops graded in accordance with the 
Mosaic economy, introducing, of course, the same purifications, 
and adding other rites, until we have the full-orbed develop- 
ment of Popery, with all its forms and mummeries. 

Hear Neander again, same volume and page : 

"While the great principle of the New Testament is the unfolding of the 
kingdom of God from within, from the union with Christ brought about after 
the like immediate manner in all, by faith, the readmission of the Old Testa- 
ment position in making the kingdom of God outward, went on the assump- 
tion that an outward mediation was necessary in order to spread this kingdom 
in the world. Such a mediation was to form for the Christian Church a priest- 
hood fashioned after the model of that of the Old Testament. 

" The universal priestly character of all saints grounded in the common and im- 
mediate relation of all to Christ as the source of the divine life was repressed, 
the idea interposing itself of a particular mediatory priesthood, attached to a 
distinct order. This recasting the Christian spirit in the Old Testament form 
did not take place, it is true, everywhere uniformly alike ! Where some Jew- 
ish element chiefly predominated, it might very easily grow up out of this, 
where the Pauline element among the Pagan Christians had unfolded itself in 
opposition to the Jewish, still the Christian spirit, grown up to independence, 
but not being able to maintain itself at this lofty position, by virtue of a rela- 
tionship springing up in itself icith the Jewish position, passed over to the Jew- 
ish. Of such a change which had now taken place in the Christian mode of 
thinking, toe have a witness as early as Tertullian, when he, in a work concern- 
ing baptism, calls the bishop the summits sacerdos (chief priest), a title certainly 
not invented by him, but which had been adopted from a prevailing mode both 
of speaking and thinking, in a certain portion at least, of the Church.* This 
title presupposes that men had begun already to compare the presbyters with 
the priests, and the deacons, or the spiritual class generally, with the Levites. 
.... In general, the more men fall back from the evangelical to the Jewish 
point of view, the more must the original, free constitution of the communities, 

* Tertullian wrote A. r>. 200, hence the custom of calling leading ministers 
" chief priests " could come from no other than a Jewish source at that early day. 



132 RITUALISM DETHEONED. 

grounded in those original Christian views become changed. We find Cyprian 
(a. d. 250) already completely imbued with the notions which sprang out of 
this confounding together of the different points of view of the Old and New 
Testaments. 

" This notion of a peculiar people of God, applied distinctively to a particular 
order of men among the Christians, is something wholly foreign to the original 
Christian consciousness, for all Christians should be a people consecrated to 
God " (»'. e. having God's ordination), " and all the employments of their earthly 
calling should, in like manner, be sanctified by the temper in which they are 
discharged. Their whole life and doing should become a consecrated thank- 
offering and a spiritual worship. This was the original evangelical idea. . . . 
But although the idea of the priesthood in the purely evangelical sense grew 
continually more obscure, and was thrust into the background in proportion as 
the unevangelical point of view became predominant, yet it was too deeply 
rooted in the very essence of Christianity to be wholly suppressed. In the 
boundary epoch of Tertullian we still find many significant proofs that there 
was a reaction of the primitive Christian consciousness of the universal priest- 
hood and the common rights grounded therein against the arrogated power of 
a particular priesthood, which had recently begun to form itself on the model of 
the Old Testament. Tertullian, in his work on haptism, written before he went 
over to Montanism, distinguishes, with reference to this matter, divine right, 
and human order. 'In itself considered/ he says, 'the laity also have the 
right to administer the sacraments, and to teach in the community. 
The word of God, and the sacraments were by the grace of God communicated 
to all ' [What sacraments were communicated by the grace of God ?], ' and may 
therefore be communicated by all Christians as instruments of the divine grace. 
'But,' continues Tertullian, 'we may use the words of Paul, "All things are 
lawful for me, but all things are not expedient." If we look at the order 
necessary to be maintained in the Church, the laity are therefore to exercise 
their priestly right of administering the sacraments only when the time and 
circumstances require it.' " 

Now, who does not see by the above extracts from Neander 
and from Alexander Campbell, that the " Pauline doctrine," 
as Neander calls it, of making Christianity a system " wholly 
spiritual," prevailed almost exclusively in the Gentile churches 
for seventy-five or one hundred years after the death of Paul, 
so that baptisms and other adjuncts of Judaism were scarcely 
named or known ? But, if we take Neander's philosophy on 
the subject, "the Christian Church could not maintain itself 
in this lofty position," but must needs go back to Moses and 
become " perfected by the flesh " — by a ritual law — which 
Paul in his letter to the Galatians so stoutly reprimands, and 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 133 

oft denounces in other epistles. Paul, it seems, had started 
them out on a lofty Christian position, but they must conquer 
the world by going back to Moses, the Levitical priesthood, 
the law, and the ritual, and, as Neander fitly calls it, " a new 
law discipline." And it is easy to be inferred also that the 
ritual came in to add to, and augment the power of the priest- 
hood, for they soon made salvation in this world, and that 
which is to come, dependent on the rituals (the baptisms and 
sacraments) as administered by their hands. This is notori- 
ous. About Cyprian's time we see a great part of the priest- 
hood, i. e. the clergy in Rome and Africa, laid hold of this 
arm of power to govern the churches at their will. 

Baptismal regeneration became the key of the kingdom, 
which they held, and " opened and no man might shut, and 
shut, and no man might open." These assumptions drew on, 
as Neander says, gradually — commencing with the " boundary 
epoch " of Tertullian, about A. d. 175, and culminating by 
carrying the Western Church into the vortex of the Papacy — 
manifesting itself more and more from the third century for- 
ward. 

So the non-ritualistic pyramid we build rests on the broad 
base, as given by Neander, viz., the Pauline Church was 
" wholly spiritual," and on this side was the universal Christian 
consciousness, and, as far as Church history testifies, the uni- 
versal practice of the Gentile churches, in the age immediately 
succeeding the apostles. And Neander himself specifies the 
return to the graded priesthood, after the Mosaic pattern, and 
the assumption and use of the prerogative of baptism as the 
earliest tokens of an apostasy from Christianity. 

We shall know then, hereafter, where to find the true 
Church, and where the apostate or heretical church. Mark 
that ! 

But we have not concluded the evidence on this point, — we 
have only commenced it. 

See Neander, vol. i. p. 341 : 

" Aa Christ himself had faithfully observed the Mosaic law, so the faithful 



134 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

observance of it was adhered to at first by all believers, and was held to be a 
necessary condition of participating in the Messiah's kingdom."* 

The reader will perceive that this will cover that portion of 
the apostolic epoch, up to the time when the Apostle Paul 
became the great apostle of the Gentiles, and commenced pro- 
testing against imposing on the Gentiles the yoke of bondage 
to the Mosaic ritual ; which protest fills a large share of sev- 
eral of his epistles. In that epoch, then, the " following of 
Christ " in ritual observances, in baptisms, and sacred feasts, 
was but following Moses, f It was in this condition of bond- 
age to Moses that Paul found the whole Church, and it is 
probable that he had more than one grapple with Peter and 
James on the subject, before he obtained their full consent to 
his rejecting " Moses " and the ritual law among the Gentiles. 
The most remarkable contest of this kind is recorded in the 
second chapter of Galatians, in which Paul declares that he 
" withstood Peter to the face," protesting against Peter's re- 
quiring the Gentiles to conform to the ritual of the Jews. It 
was after this event, mark, that Peter wrote to the " elect," 
scattered abroad, over all the earth, that they were saved by 
another baptism than that which " put away the filth of the 
flesh." And Paul declares that Peter, James, and John, 
though themselves had been ministers of the "circumcision," 
gave to him the "right hand of fellowship " in his non-ritual 
w r ork among the Gentiles (Gal. ii. 9). 

Now hear Neander again as to the process of transition 
from the Petrine or Mosaic, to the Pauline or Christian dis- 
pensation of the Church (vol. i. p. 341) : 



* It ought not to be necessary to stop here and show that Paul's conflict 
with " the circumcision," as he termed the Jewish Christians, was a conflict 
with all the ceremonials they conjoined with the circumcision — baptism, sacri- 
fices, and the observance of "days and times." It was all one economy — a 
trusting totally in externalized worship and ceremonials, without the heart- 
renewal. Christ came to preach the way whereby not only Jews but all 
others could be saved. 

f This explains the baptisms recorded in the book of Acts. 






GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 135 

" After the preparatory labors of Stephen, the martyr, and other men of 
Hellenistic origin, and of Peter, that which Christ intended when He said Ha 
was not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it; and when He called himself 
the Lord of the Sabbath, that which Christ meant by the worship of God con- 
fined no longer to particular times or places, but in spirit and in truth; the 
essence of the new spiritual creation, which is grounded in the resurrection of 
Christ, was clearly conceived and expressed by the Apostle Paul, and a self- 
subsisting Christian Church " (t. e. a church not depending upon the canonical 
interposition of a priesthood), " wholly independent of Judaism formed 
among the Pagans. " 

This reasserts the truth of the non-ritualistic position of all 
the Gentile churches at first. But Neander continues : 

" Already a schism threatened to break out between the two elements of 
which the Christian Church was composed " (viz.), " The prevailing notion of 
Christianity in Palestine which was characterized by a decided leaning to the 
Old Testament, and which suffered the new spirit to remain enveloped in the old 
forms of Judaism, and the independent Pauline development of Christianity 
among the Pagans. By the compromise entered into between the two parties at 
Jerusalem, this opposition was harmoniously reconciled, and it was the triumph 
of the idea of a Catholic Church, whose unity, grounded in the faith in Jesus as 
the one Saviour and Lord of all, was to outweigh all subordinate differences of 
Jewish or Hellenistic forms of culture. Yet the deep-seated opposition was 
not wholly overcome, but continued among some who opposed Paul's catholicity. 
About the middle of the second century we find the two parties recognized in 
the dialogue of Justin Martyr with Trypho. Two classes are there mentioned, 
that which in their own practice united with the faith in Christ the observance 
of the Mosaic luio (some of these not requiring converted Pagans to observe 
it), and some, not content with observing the Mosaic law themselves, were for forc- 
ing the Pagan believers universally to the same observance, proceeding on the 
assumption that the believing Pagans, like all others, ivere unclean* and that 
without the observance of the Mosaic laic, no man could be just before God." 



* Up to this point, and even here, Neander studiously avoids specifying 
baptism as a part of the Jewish ritual law that Paul had laid aside in building 
the Gentile Church upon a " purely spiritual" basis. But here, incidentally, 
the whole truth comes into view — the Judaizers from Palestine assumed that 
the " believing Pagans, like all others, were unclean— and that without the 
observance of the Mosaic law," (why don't he say " without baptism," for that 
was the way they washed away their " uncleanness," as also the baptizing 
Christians taught, and none knew this better than Neander?), "no man could be 
just before God." Here we may see how Churchly customs could warp even 
the candor of a Neander. 



136 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

There, reader, you have an effort for the introduction of bap- 
tismal purifyings among these newly converted Pagans — about 
the middle of the second century, and their increase in the 
popular church from this time onward to the tenth century, 
when Popery was at its zenith. 

Thus are we verifying our position that water-baptism among 
the Gentiles was not of apostolic origin, but rather the out- 
growth of an apostasy from the spirituality of the Christian sys- 
tem, through the influence of Christian teachers from Palestine. 
We had long been persuaded that there was more opposition to 
rituals, both in the early and later ages of the Church, than 
ritualistic historians were willing to record — and like the astro- 
nomer who notices the veering of a planet in its orbit, suspecting 
the cause, he sets his telescope and discovers a new planet — so 
we having noted the hints that some opposed water-baptisms and 
sacraments in early ages, set our telescopic glass, and find the 
age succeeding the apostles almost without any observance of a 
ritual law — the evidence of which ritualistic historians had 
carefully concealed — and only by indirect hints does the truth 
of it come palpably into view. So that our conception is more 
than corroborated with circumstantial proof, as abundant as 
could be desired. Both Baptists and Pedo-Baptists freely admit 
that there were those that rejected baptism all along the ages 
— the historians call them heretics — but, at the same time, 
admit that many of them were the most spiritual and exemplary 
part of the Christian Church. We have learned how to weigh 
their estimate of heresy, and in what rank to place the accuser 
and the accused. The accused we count as the purest of 
Christ's chosen flock, and the accusers as versed and educated 
ritualists, oft wholly unsound in the faith.* And, who does 

* The Hellenistic Christians of Palestine — converted from among the Jews — 
retained the Jewish rituals, and were Socinian in faith — and Judaizing teachers 
of Christianity from Palestine, extended their influence into Northern Africa, 
thence to Rome, Spain and Britain, until, in the second and third centuries, the 
doctrine of baptismal regeneration (not very " sound doctrine ") became the doc- 
trine of the popular church, and this apostasy towards sacramentarianism con- 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 137 

not know that all this talk about sacraments has no warrant 
in the New Testament ? Is there any word in the New Testa- 
ment that answers to the word sacraments, or declares who 
shall administer them ? Is not the idea wholly Popish and 
priestly ? Ordinances are named in the New Testament, but 
ever as Jewish, and to be disregarded and renounced. And, 
when reassumed in after centuries, the appeal is not to Christ's, 
or apostolic authority, but to tradition. Of this we have abun- 
dant proof. It might be assumed in advance that a new 
dispensation (for all the world) would not be ritualistic like the 
old (the Jewish), and that Christ would not give a law to 
make bigots and sectarists, or to befool the unconverted with 
a vain hope of a ritual regeneration. Can any one assent to 
the proposition that the commission to convert the world was 
given a baptismal sheath ? or that Christ's spirit can be cir- 
cumscribed by a ritual ? There can be no sacrament but 
spiritually feeding on Christ. No sacred shrines or fonts, or 
forms — souls sanctified only are sacred. The heavenly life is 
not run in the narrow mould of a creed, or guarded and 
guided and bounded by a rite. Christ has not put salvation 
at the mercy of human frailty and shortsightedness, or in the 
power of priestly arrogance thus. No man's spiritual good is 
at the disposal of any administrator of rites. Likeness to 
Christ requires no ceremonial or bodily imitation of Christ. 
If this were implied in following Christ there would be no end 
of seeking an outward, apish imitation, forgetting the necessity 
of a moral resemblance. It requires all the powers of 

tinued to prevail and extend, until the Roman Church was very extensively cor- 
rupted, and the number of sacraments wits multiplied by the priesthood from 
nought to one, two, three, five, seven, and even b}' some to twelve : (See the teach- 
ing of Damiani on the subject) ; and every form of superstition soon became con- 
nected with their observance, for what began with human caprice, and priestly 
love of power, could be augmented and diversified by the same caprice, and it 
would require a huge volume to record but briefly the development and vari- 
ations and extremes of sacraraentarianism from the second century through all 
the ages of the Papacy. But the true Church continued to be, to a great ex- 
tent, outside of this Judaized and ritualized Roman Church! 



138 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Protestantism, and all their vehemence of logic and protest to 
keep serious souls from a legal bondage, or a vain trust in the 
form or shell of religion. 

The Spiritual Baptism exchanged for Baptismal 
Kegeneration. 

That was simply a fearful apostasy that led the Church so 
extensively, in the third century, to embrace the doctrine of 
baptismal regeneration, or that in any age teaches that sacra- 
ments can sanctify or save. The arch-deceiver is pleased with 
the illusive dream. Christ found the Jews in that delusion, and 
He did not continue two sacraments, to continue the delusion. 

Rev. J. T. Hendrick, in his work on Baptism, says : 

" No one pretends that these Fathers (Cyprian, Tertullian, Chrysostom, etc.) 
speak of baptism in any such language as Peter and Paul, and John and 
Christ did. The difference is as great as that between day and night. But 
what caused the difference? Their notions of sin being in matter, or in the 
body, and that purity was obtained by the sacraments alone. But we never 
hear anything of all this from Christ, Peter, or Paul. The religion of Christ 
was a religion of principles. .... The religion of the Fathers, even in the 
seeond century, became a religion of sacraments or ceremonies, as the Catholic 
religion now is. The 6rst symptom of decay in religion, at that time, was, as 

it ever has been, a revival of the ritual or ceremonial part Principles 

and sacraments in religion never can be kept abreast of each other, they will 
not remain in a state of equipoise, the spiritual part will be thrown back, and 

retire, and the merest formalities and grossest superstitions will follow 

No sooner than Christ had died, even before His immediate disciples died, this 
leaven of Judaism . . . began to work itself into the Church, and did leaven the 
whole lump, and continued down to the Reformation." 

Hear the Fathers talk ; first hear Chrysostom : 

" Although a man should be foul with every vice, the blackest that can be 
named, yet should he fall into the baptismal pool, he ascends from the divine 
waters purer than the beams of noon ; he is made just in a moment." 

Again : 

" They who approach the baptismal font, although fornicators, etc., are not 
only made clean, but holy also, and just. As a spark thrown into the ocean is 
instantly extinguished, so is sin (be it what it may) extinguished when the 
man is thrown into the laver of regeneration." 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 139 

So Meander says : 

"In maintaining against the Cainites the necessity of outward baptism, 
Tertullian ascribes to water a supernatural sanctifying power." 

So we see the earliest trace of the doctrine of baptismal 
regeneration (for Tertullian wrote in the second century) is 
found in turning away from the doctrine of a spiritual bap- 
tism only, to sustain and enforce the ritual baptism with 
water. So testifies Neander, vol. i. p. 311 : 

"But when .... from want of duly distinguishing between what is out- 
ward and what is inward in baptism, the baptism by water and the baptism by 
the Spirit, the error became more firmly established that without external bap- 
tism no one could be delivered from the inherent guilt, or saved from the ever- 
lasting punishment, or raised to eternal life; and a notion of the magical 
influence and cliarm connected with the sacraments gained ground; the theory 
was finally evolved of the unconditional necessity of infant baptism." 

Then note the superstitions of every conceivable form in the 
earliest ages connected with the introduction of baptism 
among the Pagan Christians, and deemed by those who prac- 
tised them just as sacred as the baptisms themselves, and, if we 
mistake not, Tertullian himself declaring them to be of the 
same origin, viz., TKADITIOK 

How they Baptized. 
Wall says ; part ii. p. 417 : 

" The ancient Christians when they were baptized by immersion were all 
baptized naked, whether men, women, or children. They thought it better 
represented the putting off the old man, and also the nakedness of the cross of 
Christ. Moreover, as baptism is a washing, they judged it should be the 
washing of the body, not of the clothes." 

Also it was repeated three times, and called trine immersion. 
Chrysostom says : 

" Our Lord delivered us one baptism by three immersions." 

And Tertullian says : 

" We are three times plunged into the water, and when we are taken up, we 
taste a mixture of milk and honey. When we go to meat, when we lie down, 
sit down, and whatever business we have, we make on our foreheads the sign 



140 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

of the cross. If you search the Scriptures," he continues, " for any command 
for these and such like usages, you shall find none. TRADITION will be 
urged to you as the ground of them — custom as the confirmation of them — and 
our religion teaches us to observe them." 

Besides the above connected mummeries, there was also, 
usually, the holy kiss, unction, confirmation, exorcism, and 
putting on white robes for so many days. Now, who shall 
say that the one of these (the baptism for example) is not just 
as scriptural and apostolical as the others, and no more so ? 
Why did they resort to any of these rites ? We shall soon 
see. 

Origin of Infant Baptism — Synchronical with Adult 
Baptism. 

The purifyings prescribed by the Mosaic law had no respect 
to age or sex, but were to be alike incumbent on all that had 
become in any manner ceremonially defiled. They had no 
respect to individual character, but whoever had contracted 
ceremonial defilement, must either himself use the prescribed 
baptisms of purification, or the priest, parent, or ward, must 
apply them. None that understands the genius of Judaism 
will doubt this — being assured that it was one law for all the 
people — in order to continue in the national fellowship. The 
purifications were to be as universal as the circumcision. 
When Moses first baptized Israel, he " sprinkled both the book 
and all the people." This, of course, included those of all ages. 

It is a singular querying that has arisen in later ages, as to 
the origin of infant baptism. Jewish writers all agree that it 
was practised near the commencement of the Christian era, 
and that it had been the practice through their whole national 
history. They certainly did not derive infant baptism, nor 
adult baptism, from Christ, or his forerunner, John. They 
crucified Christ and beheaded John ; surely they did not bor- 
row their baptisms. They reviled Christians and their Messiah 
with language unfit to be uttered — they did not learn their 
liturgy nor their ritual. The proofs of Jewish infant baptism 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 141 

is as complete as the proof of Jewish adult baptism; and 
inspiration gives abundant proof of the latter. When Paul 
speaks of the " divers baptisms " under the law, and other 
New Testament writers of the " household baptisms," we have 
allusion simply to the Jewish baptisms of purification. When, 
therefore, the baptism of the infant is suspended it is very 
likely that the baptism of the adult will be suspended, and 
for the same reason. That both had been immemorially prac- 
tised, not only, as we said, every Jewish writer testifies, but 
every non-Jewish writer of Jewish history, who has the least 
show of fitness for his work. 
We will here cite a few of 

The Witnesses, 

leaving a large portion of them to find their place in the 
analysis or review of the ritualistic writers. 
Wood, on Baptism, p. 48, states : 

" The Rabbis unanimously assert that the baptism of proselytes has been 
practised by the Jews in all ages, from Moses down to the time when they 
wrote." 

Prideatjx (Con., vol. ii. p. 203) says : 

" When any were proselyted to the Jewish religion, they were initiated to it 
by baptism, sacrifice, and circumcision." 

Dr. Ltghtfoot, one of the most learned men of any age, 

says : 

" The practice of baptizing infants was a thing as well known in the church 
of the Jews as ever it has been in the Christian Church." 

Calmet quotes Abram Booth, a father of the Baptist Church 
in England, as admitting that : 

"The children of proselytes were baptized with their parents, among the 
Jews." 

Maimonides, a learned Jewish writer of the twelfth century, 
who concentred in himself all prior Jewish learning, and 
great knowledge of both Jewish and Gentile history, affirms 
that : 



142 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

" In all ages when a Gentile is willing to enter into covenant with Israel, 
and take upon himself the yoke of the law, he must be circumcised and bap- 
tized, and bring a sacrifice." 

Again he says : 

" An Israelite that takes a little heathen child (in war), or that finds an hea- 
then infant, and baptizes him for a proselyte, behold he is a proselyte." 

The making of proselytes thus was a very common thing 
in the process of the Jewish successful wars. And such are 
the facts of Jewish history which Wall cites as the clew to 
the interpretation of Christ's commission, Matt, xxviii. 19. 
We have room here for but one more witness ; — the Baby- 
lonian Talmud, composed near the close of the second century, 
by Jewish religious teachers, says : 

" When a proselyte is received he must be circumcised, and . . . they bap- 
tize (i. e. purify) him. The proselytes enter not into covenant but by circum- 
cision, baptism, and sprinkling of blood." 

Again : 

" He is no proselyte unless he be circumcised and baptized. If he he not 
baptized (purified) he remains a G-entile." 

Wall also quotes Selden as affirming that the saying of 
Paul, 1 Cor. x. 1, 2 : 

"'All our fathers were baptized unU Moses/ " would not have been under- 
stood, "had it not been a custom to enter into covenant by baptism." 

On p. 14, Wall adds : 

" If any proselyte who came over to the Jewish religion, and was baptized 
in it, had any infant children, they also, at their father's request, were circum- 
cised and baptized, and admitted as proselytes. Thus they were covenanted 
to the God of Israel. Thus was it done to proselytes as to Abraham at his 
first admission to the covenant of circumcision. The proselyte was (necessarily) 
baptized to cleanse him from heathen pollutions (and the blood of circumcision). 
The Jews argued respecting this, that there was no more reason for waiting 
for the child of a proselyte to be grown, or to come to riper years, than for the 
child born of Jewish parents. And the Gemara explains thus : ' If with a 
proselyte, his sons and his daughters be made proselytes, that which is done by 
their father redounds to their good.' Thus also, the Mishna declares. The 
Gemara proceeds further to explain why and how the infants were baptized : 
* Because none is made a proselyte without circumcision and baptism, — and if 
the father be dead, at the request of the council, which consists of three men, 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 143 

that have care of this baptism, according to the law, and the baptism of 
proselytes.' These were the godfathers of the candidates, for, as Selden ob- 
serves, ' If a proselyte be a minor, this court did prof ess in his name,' i. e. in 
the name of the minor, the ' things required.' Under age, or a minor, was, if a 
son, under the age of thirteen years and a day ; if a daughter, under the age 
of twelve years and a day." 

This preciseness of statement shows that the writer knew 
whereof he affirmed. But Wall continues : 

" The comparative infrequency of proselyte baptism was on the ground that, 
like the children of natural Jews, the children of proselyted Gentiles, if born 
after the baptism of their parents, were counted clean without baptism." 

Seldeu, Tayler, Walker, Tombes, Lightfoot, Wall, etc., 
quote the Jews as teaching this : 

" The sons of proselytes in following generations were circumcised indeed, 
but not baptized (?'. e. as proselytes), as being already Israelites." 

So the Talmud says : 

" The unborn child is baptized with the baptism of the (pregnant) mother." 

The teaching of Moses is that there should be " one laiv," 
both for the Israelites and the stranger that joins them. The 
Israelites, under Moses, entered into covenant by baptism and 
sacrifice — (after circumcision) so must every stranger — and 
then observe all other purifications (baptisms) of the law. 

Cherithoth and Rabbi Solomon testify to this. 

So Cyprian says : 

" The case of the Jews who were to be baptized by the apostles, was different 
from the case of the Gentiles, for the Jews had already, and A long time ago, 

THE BAPTISM OF THE LAW, AND OF MoSES." 

And corroborating Robinson, Wall says (quoting Ter- 
tullian) : 

" The heathens have used of old a certain rite of baptism, which they said 

was for the forgiveness of sins." 

And Gregory Nazianzen, a Christian Father, all his life 
conversant with the Jews, says : 

11 Moses gave a baptism, but that was with water only ; before that they 
were baptized ' in the cloud, and in the sea/ but these were but a type or frame 
of ours, as Paul understands it." 



144 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Wall hence argues that Jesus Christ, in the Great Com- 
mission, designed to require the keeping up of the Jewish 
purifications, and he interprets the commission only by these, 
utterly unworthily, as we think. Nevertheless, we admit 
that he used a word before used in reference to these, but, as 
both John and himself testify, in the sense of the moral or 
spiritual purifying. We have cited the above authorities and 
witnesses thus extensively, because baptizers in the Christian 
Church have remained so extensively unapprised of the Jew- 
ish ritual law, and Jewish customs growing out of them, and 
that all may see where and when their baptismal custom 
originated, and, therefore, where they belong. Showing, also, 
what customs John, and Jesus, our Lord, found existing in 
their day, and what it was that they declared should give place 
to the " ministration of the Spirit." Nothing is more capable 
of demonstration than that water-baptism originated with 
Moses or the Patriarchs, and that numerous Christian sects are 
seeking to keep themselves in a ritual bondage to Judaism. 

Be it noted that the Talmud, the Jewish liturgy, and Church 
directory, written in the second century, did not borrow bap- 
tism (as we said) from the Christian Church, nor from John, 
who honored Christ ever; nor did it impose a new ritual 
(ordinance) upon the Jews — no more than " circumcision " and 
" sacrifice " conjoined with "purification " were new ordinances. 
None doubt that their circumcision points back to Abraham, 
and their sacrifices to Moses, or even earlier ; why not their 
baptisms ? If not, when did they originate ? Let him that 
readeth, answer. 

But mark, full many have puzzled and confused themselves 
in searching after a sacramental baptism among the Jews, as a 
purely and distinctly independent rite, having no respect to 
previously contracted defilement, but established as an initi- 
atory ordinance in taking the covenant of Moses. None of 
these baptisms we have cited were of that kind, nor was there 
any such baptism ever established in the Jewish history, nor 
in the early centuries of the Christian Church. The idea of 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 145 

purification, regeneration, a new birth into a purer faith, was 
in the early Christian Church the same as in the Jewish. 

It is true that circumcision was but once in the life (save 
when Joshua re-circumcised Israel with knives of stone for a 
great occasion), while baptism was repeatable on every new 
occasion of defilement. It was assumed that all Gentiles 
came to the covenant with ceremonial defilement, either from 
" eating blood," "touching a dead body," or from contact with 
the uncircumcised ; hence they could not be at first received 
into the congregation until baptized — i. e. purified — and their 
purification, as with native Israelites, must be repeated on 
every new occasion of defilement. And the blood of circum- 
cision itself, as Dr. Gale tells us, was one new occasion of de- 
filement requiring baptism. Baptisms are not always recorded, 
since lawful customs did not need to be recorded in every ins- 
stance of their observance ; specially when the custom is of 
long standing, the observance of the custom is to be assumed. 
Yet Mark (a Jew), chap, vii., and Paul (a Hebrew), Heb. ix., 
bear ample witness to these customs. 

Nor is there any doubt that the children of families once 
proselyted, born after the covenant of Moses had been taken 
by the father and his household, ceased to be regarded as 
needing purification because of contact with Gentiles, and, there- 
fore, were not baptized only for such causes as were the native 
Jews. This explains the reason of the decrease of proselyte 
baptism, which Dr. Wall alludes to in treating upon the latter 
period of Jewish history. Moreover, a declining and aposta- 
tizing nation would not receive many proselytes to its religion. 
Nor would the (Sadducee) skeptics and infidels pay very much 
attention to the rites of religion. TrUe, the Pharisees carried 
their ritualism to the extreme of idolatry of the ritual, but few 
were attracted to their standard at this time. 

Why a Decline of Infant Baptism? 

But the great cause of the decline of infant baptism in the 
early Christian age, was the fervency, pungency, and point of 
10 



146 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

John's preaching, with its result ; and afterwards that of 
Christ and the apostles. John laid the " axe " at the " root 
of the tree," and required heart-repentance of every indivi- 
dual ; that " every tree " for itself should " bring forth good 
fruit," and not trust in ceremonial purifications, nor a pretence 
of repentance, or obedience by proxy. He insisted that every 
one should give evidence of being personally penitent, else he 
forbade them even the ritual cleansing. The " generation of 
vipers " must first prove themselves the " children of Abra- 
ham," by timely repentance, and bearing its " fruits." The 
same was true of the preaching of Christ and the apostles. 
When (being Jews) they observed rites, they sought to make 
them servants to the truth, and not to hold themselves in ser- 
vile subjection to the rite. Thus, with or without the out- 
ward circumcision, or baptism, or Passover, they preached 
the circumcision of the heart, and the baptism of the soul, and 
the " Paschal Lamb " that was " slain " on Calvary, whose 
blood alone is efBcacious to purify and atone. 

This would turn even the Jewish mind from Pharisee for- 
malities, and from so much thought about ceremonial defile- 
ments, to those defilements that were real and soul-destroying. 
Hence they would oftener forget the ritual purifying of the 
non-conscious infant, being more entirely absorbed in con- 
cern for their own personal regeneration, and eternal salvation. 
And in behalf of their " households " also, these " weightier 
matters" would necessarily become their great concern. True, 
the mould in which their religious ideas had been formed 
would not be rejected at once ; hence, those most churchly in 
their sentiments and views, would pay the most attention to 
the circumcisions, the baptisms, and the feasts, in the obser- 
vance of which they had been educated. 

But the dominion of the whole Jewish ceremonial law could 
not long be retained in the growing life of the Christian 
Church. It must burst these cerements. The land is too 
narrow ; the shell too contracted to hold a life that knows no 
boundaries of nation, creed, or ceremony. 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 147 

A Greater Cause of its Decline. 

But a greater cause of the decline of infant baptism (and of 
adult baptism also) was the slowly developing conviction in 
the Christian Church that ceremonial defilements were mythi- 
cal and unreal ; that neither Gentiles nor Jews were unclean 
before God on account of any bodily accident or exposure ; 
that Moses had made use of these regulations respecting puri- 
fying to impress the need of a moral purifying, — and hence, 
when the moral purity was gained, the great work of the law, 
and the great work of Christ had been gained, and that in the 
beginning and ending of this work, the Gentile and Jew stood 
on the same foundation in the sight of a holy God, irrespec- 
tive of any rites or ceremonies. 

This was, in the first place, the outgrowth of John's teach- 
ing, that God required heart-repentance of each and all alike; 
hence even the ceremonially im-defiled Jews came to his bap- 
tism by thousands ; it was, in the second place, a result of 
Christ's teaching, that not that which " goeth into a man " 
physically, defileth him, but that which was begotten in and 
came forth from the heart, and that God sought not worship- 
pers after the form, but worshippers after the spirit. 

Christ and Paul saw that to blot out Judaism was indispen- 
sable to the resurrection and perpetuity of a genuine Church. 

But the non-existence of the supposed ceremonial defilement 
requiring baptism, was still more clearly shown in the vision 
of Peter, in the case of Cornelius, to whom the angel said, 
"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common or 
unclean." And yet Peter could not then look further than to 
see that he might preach to, and eat with the uncircumcised ; 
and seeing the tmcircumcised purified of the Holy Ghost, he 
judged they were deserving of entrance into the Jewish 
(Mosaic) covenant by baptism, without the heretofore indis- 
pensable circumcision. But Peter did not even yet give up cir- 
cumcision and queryings about "meats," and the right to eat 
with Gentiles when among the Jews (see book of Galatians). 



148 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

He was doubtless as much inspired in this as in baptizing 
Cornelius, and no more. And so with Paul, who, after this 
event, oft observed the Passover and Pentecostal feasts of 
the Jews. But Paul would allow no such yoke of ritualism 
to be imposed on the Gentiles. And he (1 Cor. vii. 14) gives 
them a very good reason why their children needed no bap- 
tism : they are already " holy " (undefiled), in consequence of 
their relation to a believing parent, or parents. Although 
not purified by their own faith, they need no ceremonial puri- 
fying, notwithstanding they are born of Gentile parentage. 
This, though so often overlooked, is to our* mind most evi- 
dently the interpretation of this passage. And it harmonizes 
with all Paul's letters to the Gentile churches, in which he 
tells them that by the spiritual baptism into Christ they are 
made " one with Christ," and " heirs " through the spirit of 
adoption, and not by any ceremonial observance. 

A Decline of Infant Baptism is a Decline of Bap- 
tism ITSELF. 
It surely lessens the number of persons to be baptized. And 
the same view of the radical and saving nature of the true 
baptism, which would lay little stress upon the application 
of a mere symbol to a child, would lead the same mind to 
lay little stress upon the application of the symbol to an im- 
penitent adult. Although he baptized many, because many 
gave evidence of repentance, yet not as before, when the 
priests ritually purified all the ceremonially defiled, whether 
penitent or impenitent, John manifestly refused all but the 
penitent. Nor is there one word of proof that any apostle or 
Christian father, for, at least, one hundred and fifty years 
after John, baptized a single infant, or any one not professing 
repentance. John commenced the change, then, from the 
Jewish custom to the " Reformation " custom. " House- 
holds," in a few instances, were baptized, and we object not 
to conceding that they contained children (if so, they were 
blessed by the purifying as much as Jewish children had been 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 149 

before, and no more) ; but it is wholly gratuitous to assume 
that there is one iota of proof of the apostolic baptism of in- 
fants. 

The history of the baptism of infants in Christian and Jew- 
ish history is like an hour-glass — the largest at either terminus, 
with that period near the Christian era left nearly invisible 
and non-connective. This, if we may trust the most reliable 
historians, is the unquestionable truth. 

Olshausen says : 

" Of infant baptism the New Testament knows nothing." 

Hahn says that 

" There is no proof of a single infant baptism in the Christian Church for 
one hundred and fifty years after Christ." 

We think that a few Judaizers in Palestine, and in a west- 
ward line therefrom, did baptize infants in " households " 
occasionally ; hence Pelagius' (a Briton's) " impressions " on 
the subject, and Augustine's (rumor of) "apostolic tradition" 
to that effect. But none of them do say or dare say that the 
apostles and Gentile churches continuously baptized infants. 
(Reserving Neander's ample testimony to another page), do 
not our later Church historians see the gap in the history of 
infant baptism to be simply a gap in the history of baptism it- 
self f This gap, according to Neander, is found in the history 
of all the Gentile churches. 

Judaizers have ever Confounded the Jewish and 
Gentile Churches. 
The Judaizers continued to practise adult and infant bap- 
tism, thus transferring the Mosaic purifications to the Chris- 
tian Church, even as our modern Pedo-Baptist writers claim 
to build their churches after the Old Testament model — assert- 
ing that the Christian Church is but a continuance of the 
Jewish, with the slight change of the substitution of baptism 
in the Christian Church for circumcision in the Jewish 
Church. Conkling's " Text-book on Baptism " is wholly de- 



150 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

voted to this effort to identify the two Churches as one and the 
same, affirming the Jewish Church to be identical with the 
Christian, even after the ritual law of Moses had been added 
to Abraham's church of simple faith in the " promise:" 
Hear him, p. 108, and on : 

" To understand the laws and usages of the Church of God the searcher 
goes to her organization, and consults her constitution .... .and asks what 
does that teach? Who were received into covenant relation then? What 
were the rites and duties, the privileges, promises, and responsibilities then ? He 
consults the history of the Church to see ' if her constitution has been revised or 
repealed.' . . . The examination of the Old Testament Scriptures with reference 
to this subject has led us to the following conclusions ; nor do we see how our 
opponents can possibly avoid these same conclusions with even a plausible 
argument : First : we have shown that the Old Testament Church, organized 
under the covenant of circumcision, was the true visible Church of God ; and 
that infants were divinely constituted members of the Church by the same re- 
ligious rite that constituted adults members. 

" Secondly: We have shown that the Old and New Testament Church is one 
and the same Church, under different dispensations, but based upon the same 
covenant, viz., the covenant of circumcision." 

There, reader, if there be not Judaism in full bloom we 
know not where you will find it. This writer's make-shift of 
putting baptism in place of circumcision, afterward, does not 
change the fact that he makes the Christian Church, in sub- 
stance, but Judaism, continued. And his proof of the change 
of the rites reminds us of the sage and astute reasoning of Dr. 
Hopkins, in his " Christian Instructor," before cited, wherein 
he says : 

" Baptism and circumcision were for many years practised synchronically 
in the Christian Church; therefore baptism takes the place of circumcision, and 
was divinely appointed to take its place ! " 

A Sciolist might inquire, " Where does the Divine Teacher 
instruct the primitive Christians as to the precise moment 
when they should drop circumcision and put baptism in its 
place so as not to be bestrode with and in bondage to both ? " 

The logic is, like the cob-web, weaker than weakness itself, 
because it lacks the divine instruction altogether ; yet as good 
as any argument to prove that any ceremonial of Moses be- 
longs to the Christian Church. 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 151 

Hendrick's work on " Baptism " proceeds on the same 
hypothesis. Hear him, p. 36 : 

u Baptism -and circumcision, then, are but two forms of the same seal. . . . 
Circumcision was the seal of initiation into the Jewish Church, and all admit 
baptism is the same in the Christian Church. . . . Circumcision was a sign 
of sanctification in the Jewish Church, ... so baptism is a sign and means of 
sanctification in the Christian Church. . . . The identity of the Christian and 
Jewish Church is manifest to all icho will carefully examine the Bible!" 

Thus we have in nearly all Pedo-Baptist writers an attempt 
to weld the Christian Church to the Jewish, not only spirit- 
ually, but ritually^ Not content with going back to Abraham, 
and the first covenant made with him, which is correct, for 
that was the covenant of promise, made twenty-four years be- 
fore circumcision was given, they cannot stop short of lugging 
into that covenant, not only circumcision, which was never 
designed for the whole world — although the covenant of promise 
was — but also all the ritual of Moses which was established 
four hundred and thirty years after, and never a part of the 
promised covenant. 

We say " all the ritual of Moses," for when they take but 
baptism, wide as they may differ from the Mosaic design of it, 
they, nevertheless, must needs have a human priesthood, and 
all the forms and orders of canonical administration, as the 
advancing papacy established them, both for baptism and 
other borrowed Jewish rites which they call sacraments. 

Thus, reader, behold what positions and logic an exigency 
will force men to occupy and use ! These writers are seeking 
to establish from Scripture the practice of infant baptism. 
They cannot do it without Moses and the law, thus engrafting 
Judaism upon Christianity ; hence their logic. The New 
Testament never has been a stronghold for them ; hence their 
resort to the Old. And the book of Hebrews (by Paul) was 
written in vain for such men,* who cannot see a change of the 
law and "disannulling of the commandment going before, for 
the weakness and unprofitableness thereof" that a better covenant 

* So 2 Cor. iii. and Paul's letter to the Galatians. 



152 EITUALISM DETHKONED. 

and a law, not encumbered with sacrifices and a ritual, might 
take their place, and be fitted to universal acceptance, and 
not merely for the Jewish nation. 

They forgot, also, what Paul says (Gal. v. 6) : " For in 
Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor un- 
circumcisiou, but faith which worketh by love." 

We now proceed to show that outside of Palestine and the 
Hellenistic church of that region, infant baptism was not 
practised from the Apostolic age, and for centuries afterward. 

Says Neander, vol. ii. p. 319 (bear in mind this volume 
of Neander's presents the history of the Church from A. d. 
312 to 500): 

" Infant baptism was very slow in coming into the Greek Church. It was 
rarely practised during the first half of this period." 

He also recites the manner of its inception and advance, 
vol. i. p. 210. He says : 

" Cyprian's idea was, that Christ communicated to the apostles, and the 
apostles to the bishops, by ordination, the power of the Holy Ghost, whence, 
alone, all religious acts can derive their efficacy. By the succession ot bishops 
this power of the Holy Ghost is extended to all time.* None can derive this 
life from Christ alone." 

Neander pronounces such a theory as " outwardism that 
needs stripping." On p. 313, Neander saysi 

"When now, on the one hand, the doctrine of corruption and guift cleaving 
to human nature in consequence of the first transgression was reduced to a more 
precise form ; and from want of duly distinguishing between what is outward 
and what is inward in baptism, the baptism by water and the baptism by the 
Spirit, the error became more firmly established, that without external baptism 
no one could be delivered from the inherent guilt — could be saved from the 
everlasting punishment threatened, . . . the theory was finally evolved of the 
unconditional necessity of infant baptism." 

To Fidus, who urged that baptism should be postponed 
until the child was eight days old, Cyprian replies : 

"As to what you say, that the child in the first days of its birth is not clean 
to the touch, and that each of us would shrink from kissing such an object; 

* Why not call this the baptism then, and the real Apostolic succession ? 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 153 

even this, in our opinion, ought to present no obstacle to the bestoivment of the 
heavenly grace ; for it is written, ' To the pure all things are pure/ and none 
of us ought to revolt at that which God has condescended to create. Although 
the child be but just born, yet it is no such object that any one ought to demur 
at kissing it to impart the divine grace, and the salutation of peace (i. e.), as a 
sign of fellowship in the Lord." 

Here the " imparting the divine grace " is divided between 
the act of baptism and the act of kissing. Which did Cyprian 
understand to be the real ordinance in this case ? Thus see 
to what puerilities ritualism had led some wise men at this era 
of the Church. This Cyprian was a noted bishop in northern 
Africa, about a. d. 250. 

Irenjeus, who wrote a. d. 200, and who seems to be about 
the first Gentile Christian teacher (Judaizer) who was willing 
to adopt infant baptism, from his Jewish neighbors, says : 

"Infant baptism appears as the medium through which Christ imparts 
sanctification to infants. Thus the divine grace is imparted to them that they 
mighfr be- sanctified from their earliest development." 

And Neander remarks that Irenseus evidently means bap- 
tism by the term regeneration when applied to infants. This 
was manifestly true, since infant baptism in the Gentile 
Church was a sprout from the doctrine of baptismal regenera- 
tion — and its necessity for all prior to death — leading some, 
like Cyprian, to haste its application to the instant of birth, 
lest they die unbaptized and lose heaven — leading others to 
teach that baptism would be administered in hades to those 
not baptized before death — and others to teach even that bap- 
tism might be administered before birth (see Robinson, p. 385). 
There seemed to be no end to the crude conceits of ritualists 
in the dawn of ritualism in the Gentile Church. 

But Tertullian opposed the views of Cyprian and 
Irenseus, saying that he 

" Could not conceive of any efficacy whatever residing in baptism, without 
the conscious participation and individual faith of the person baptized, nor 
could he see any danger accruing to the age of innocence from delaying it." 

Yet even Tertullian, who recommended for prudential rea- 
sons the delaying of baptism till just before death, on the 



154 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

ground that otherwise the sins committed after baptism could 
not be washed away, admits that infants, being as unclean as 
any, needed baptism as much as any (see Kendrick on " Bap- 
tism, p. 44). His sentiments were quite divergent from our 
Baptist brethren both ways. 

Says Neander, respecting these opposite teachings of 
ritualists of that day, vol. i. p. 314 : 

" Infants were baptized to save them from original sin ; others delayed bap- 
tism to riot in lusts till just before death, and then be cleansed from actual sins. 
All these rites had reference to one principal thing, without which no one 
could be a Christian, the forgiveness of sin, the cleansing from sin, the baptism 
of the Spirit, the birth to a new life, which was mediated by baptism in the 
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the impartation of the Holy 
Spirit following thereupon, the individual now being restored to the original 
state of innocence." 

Thus we see that when infant baptism comes (or adult bap- 
tism), they bring with them the doctrine of baptismal re- 
generation in full, showing that this ritualistic view was the 
common view of all who practised water-baptism from its 
genesis in the Christian Church and on. Water-baptism in 
all these early ages was held to be the saving ordinance (as 
Alexander Campbell, in our day, has taught it). The doctrine 
resulted in the papacy, and is fully incorporated in that system 
to-day. 

The Two Opposing Schools. 

There were but two opposing ideas relating thereto in the 
Church in the early centuries, viz., the Judaic, or ritualistic 
idea, opposed to which was the non-baptizing and anti-ritual- 
istic idea. These contesting views continued rife, in the 
Eastern Church especially, down to the time of the Reformation 
under Luther. And Luther himself reformed more in other 
respects, retaining, in creed at least, the ritualistic idea of 
baptism as an ordinance that cleanses the soul. The muddle 
of varying conceits respecting baptism and its adjuncts in the 
early ages, as at present, it is impossible fully to unfold. 

The baptizers baptized in every mode that can be conjee- 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 155 

tured, and added other rites, ad nauseam. We now inquire 
chiefly as to how we should baptize ? They chiefly contended 
as to whether they should be baptized or not, and why and 
when ? An ambitious priesthood, finding a ritual necessary 
to their official rule, piled on the ritual to the extent of their 
caprices; and persuaded themselves and others that heaven 
had appointed and sanctioned it all. 

See how the human mind can infatuate itself ! 

Says Neander : 

"It was by confounding regeneration with baptism, and thus looking upon 
regeneration as a sort of charm completed at a stroke, by supposing a certain 
magical purification and removal of all sin in the act of baptism, that men 
were led to refer the forgiveness of sins, obtained through Christ only, to the 
particular sins which had been committed previously to baptism. Afterward 
they looked to penance and supererogation for cleansing — then to purgatory 
and to baptism there." 

Showing the constant tendency to look to things outward 
for salvation. 

Their ritualism also led to the same narrow views as in later 
ages. Says Neander, vol. i. p. 655 : 

"The outward materialistic view of regeneration which arose out of the 
habit of confounding it with baptism, afterward, through narrowness of mind 
thus induced, issued in the notion of the absolute predestination of those 
baptized." 

For if there was no other evidence of the prospective final 
salvation of those baptized in their sanctified or changed 
lives, it could be assumed to rest on the basis of their predes- 
tination, thus leaving man to determine by a ritual the num- 
ber of the elect. 

Truly, as Neander says of Cyprian, that 

" Embarrassed by his habit of confounding the inward with the outward by 
his materialism, he thus mingled it with much that is erroneous." 

Predestination, we must infer, was to complete the work of 
salvation where the baptism had left it incomplete. 
Neandek adds : 

"Even in the spiritual Clement of Alexandria (a. d. 200) we may discern 



156 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

the influence of the outward and materialistic conception of spiritual matters, 
when he agrees with Hermas that the apostles performed in hades the rite of 
baptism on the pious souls of the Old Testament." 

But there is no end to the conceits of* ritualists respecting 
baptism, its modes,* its effects, tiie proper administrators, the 
time of its administration, etc., etc. 

And, so far as history tells us, nearly all these variations 
have existed since A. d. 150. We may, therefore, well ask, 
if there be a Christian law requiring ritual baptism, why so 
soon forgotten, or such utter confusion respecting it ? Which 
one of all this Babel of voices will correctly tell us what it is? 
its form ? import ? proper antecedents ? sequences ? etc., etc. 

We have a right to demand a categorical and definitive 
answer — one that shall satisfy and render of one mind on the 
subject all those that have uttered these jarring notes. Thus 
did the law of Moses ! and shall the Christian teachers be 
more ambiguous than Moses ? No man may attempt to im- 
pose an undefined law upon the Church — no more than a 
human legislature may attempt to impose such a law upon 
human society. Levites did not debate the ceremonial laws 
of Moses ; hence see how irreconcilable with himself is 
Neander, in speaking so oft of the " lofty position of Paul in 
introducing to the Gentiles a purely spiritual dispensation," 
one which the Judaizers opposed for this reason, and because 
of its unrestricted catholicity ; and then making such state- 
ments as the following : 

"Baptism and the Lord's Supper belong to the unchangeable economy of the 
Christian system." 

This is purely dogmatic, and a sop to Cerberus. 

Does he give us the law, and show us the " unchangeable 
priesthood," and the blessed fruits of giving such a law ? Nay, 
but the " unchangeable " fruits have ever been manifest. All 

* Modes of baptizing as a religious observance were almost as varied as the 
modes of secular washings and ablutions ; for these were all oft called 
baptisms. 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 157 

know that in no age or nation has water-baptism or the Supper 
tended either to catholicity or union among saints, but ever 
and forever to the reverse. 

The Baptismal Babel. 

Every student of history knows that strifes about who shall 
administer baptism, how they shall administer baptism, and 
when they shall administer baptism, and what adjuncts shall 
attend it, have been rife for 1700 years. He knows that bap- 
tism has been administered in sanctuaries and out of sanc- 
tuaries ; by bishops, priests, and deacons ; to persons sick and 
well, living and dying ; infants and adults ; by affusion, by 
immersion, by sprinkling, by putting bodies into water, and 
applying water to bodies ; by trine immersion, and by single 
immersion ; by immersing with the face downward, and im- 
mersing with the face upwards ; immersing persons naked, and 
immersing persons clothed ; sprinkling with blood, with sand, 
and with tears ; following baptism with chrism, sign of the 
cross, white robes, confirmation, holy kiss, honey and milk, 
and other mummeries too numerous to mention ; and that in 
alL these ages disputes about all these modes and adjuncts 
have been rife. Is this ritual then (and the Supper, about 
which as many conceits and as many disputes have arisen) 
found woven into Paul's " lofty catholic position," to secure 
the unity and purity of the Church ? — to educate and " train " 
the Church to that higher spiritual life which she could not 
maintain, without going back to these carnal elements ? 

Where, we again ask, does the New Testament thus teach, 
or establish and define a law of sacraments? The evidence 
simply is, that Judaizers have interpolated them, and that the 
doctrine of baptism as a Christian ordinance, and of baptismal 
regeneration, was resorted to by the priesthood to gain power 
— to increase converts to their flocks and creeds — seizing even 
infants from their birth and before, to write their mark upon 
them, with most disgusting details of ceremonial adjuncts. 



158 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Tradition the Authority Claimed. 

Neander offers no word of Scripture proof of a ritual law 
as he states it — he does not represent the ritualistic fathers as 
proving their rituals from Scriptures, or even from Christ's 
teaching or example — he descants upon the need of signs and 
emblems as helps to faith (the everlasting fallacy of all ritual- 
istic reasonings), and then, through the fathers, turns us over 
to tradition as the foundation for their practice. 

Hear Neander, vol. i. p. 314 : 

"Origen, in whose system infant baptism could readily find its place, in this 
age when the inclination was so strong to trace every institution which was 
considered of special importance to the apostles, 'declares it to be "an apostolic 
tradition." 

Neander adds : 

" Many walls of separation hindering the freedom of prospect had already 
been set up between this and the apostolic age." 

As much as to say that there was no foundation for any 
such claim of apostolic tradition. So Tertullian had told 
them, in respect to baptism and its adjuncts, especially its ad- 
juncts : 

"You shall find no other ground for them than tradition!" 

Even Augustine, in introducing infant baptism into his 
diocese, can cite no other authority than to claim that it was 
" an apostolic tradition." 

Now it would seem that even weak brethren like ourselves 
might see the utter fallacy of any such claim. Why not say 
it was an apostolic practice, if it really was ? Living, as they 
did, so near the apostolic age (Tertullian, A. d. 200, and 
Augustine, A. d. 400), the evidence could not have all faded 
out in their day — no universal change of custom, and even 
the record thereof, obliterated. The evidence appears to bear 
to the point that, at the behest of the Judaizing portion of the 
Church, Augustine (in the wake of Rome) was endeavoring 
to introduce infant baptism, as a method of inducting youth 
and children into the Church, after the Jewish model, and as 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 159 

Cyprian had done one hundred and fifty years before. His 
quoting "apostolic tradition" could only refer to the fact 
that the apostles, when among Jews, did not war against the 
Jewish customs, either of circumcision or baptism, while there 
is not a shade of evidence that they required, or even approved 
of them — i. e., as a law for the Christian Church. 

Augustine's referring to it as a "tradition" shows that he 
did not regard it as a law, nor as a well-known and common 
custom, and Meander's testimony amply attests the same. 
James (the apostle) might have practised it among the 
Jews at Jerusalem (and hence the tradition), for he was the 
" apostle of the circumcision," but there is not the slightest 
evidence that Paul, or Peter, or John, carried it among the 
Gentiles. 

Remember that Christ did not interfere with the Jewish 
ceremonial law, for he labored wholly among Jews whose pre- 
judices would not have permitted it; and the New Testament 
epistles were not written, giving the anti-ritual protests of 
Paul, until twenty or thirty years after Christ's day. All the 
confusion arising in the minds of both Baptists and Pedo- 
Baptists respecting the origin of infant baptism (or of adult 
baptism) comes from assuming that baptism has a source 
different from the real Jewish origin, as though somewhere in 
the early Christian age it had been re-enacted as a Christian 
rite, and that to supplant a Jewish rite (circumcision), albeit 
all Pedo-Baptists know that it was itself a long-standing Jew- 
ish rite. Yet the fallacy pervades the Christian Church that 
it is a something (ay, a sacrament) starting with Christ and 
the apostles ; and thus with the Christian dispensation, which 
is a demonstrated error. Is this denied ? Then let the reader 
tell at what precise date, just before or after Christ's cruci- 
fixion, Christian baptism did originate? 

Wall, the great Pedo-Baptist historian, is equally in a mud- 
dle on this subject — he cannot fix the point himself; Gill, the 
great Baptist annotator, is in the same muddle ; and Robin- 
son (Baptist) has not attempted to make the case any better. 



160 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

The ritual law of the Baptists, the Pedo-Baptists, and the 
Episcopacy is, therefore, as great a fallacy as was ever imposed 
upon the Christian Church. Irenseus, and others, simply re- 
vived baptism (infant and adult) in the Gentile churches 
when they revived Judaism. 

The Hidden Anti-Ritualistic Record Revealed. 

Having traced the tortuous, apostatizing, anti-Scriptural 
path of the ritualists, in departing from the " simplicity there 
is in Christ," let us bring out that other record, which those 
who only search after the canonical robes of churchianity and 
self-proclaimed orthodoxy have failed to see. Keep it in 
mind that God looks not on things after the outward appear- 
ance — the shell that first comes in sight to those who take 
short and unreflecting views — and that the true Church of 
Christ has as oft been the unrecognized, the unchronicled, 
and the heretical, so called, as that which has worn the canoni- 
cal robes. Tracing the record of the ritualists, we shall find 
their sphere much more limited than modern writers and pul- 
pit orators have conceived. For the first four centuries they 
seem to have extended their influence from Palestine, and the 
Judaizers there, only to Northern Africa, Rome, and the 
regions west, immediately contiguous to Rome. Greece, Mace- 
donia, Syria, Armenia, Persia, and all central Asia, seem 
scarcely to have felt their influence. As to the Jewish bap- 
tisms and customs, they were very slow in reaching this region. 
In fact, prior to A. d. 250, few of the Christian fathers seem 
to have been enamored of water-baptism in any part of the 
Church. Clement and Cyprian had begun to seek a swifter 
process of converting people to their creeds, and preparing 
them for their church and their heaven, than by the slow and 
radical process of true spiritual regeneration. Hence they 
introduced from the Jews the doctrine of baptismal regenera- 
tion. Cyprian, especially (a. d. 250), in the bishopric of 
Northern Africa, caught the idea, and carried it beyond all 
precedent or bounds of moderation — even for that superstitious 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 161 

age. From that period, we have the testimony of Optatus, 
Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, Peln- 
gius, and Celestius, that ritualism was the order of the day in 
the metropolitan churches of Home and Africa. Infant bap- 
tism and adult baptism, with all their antecedents and subse- 
quents, and pretended results, led the Church toward Popery 
as fast as mind could march and time could move. 

But they did not carry the whole Church with them : God 
reserved many a seven thousand that were not bewildered 
nor carried away with the superstitions of the ritualists. We 
find hints of this all along. 

The Baptismal Vacuum. 

We have seen how Alexander Campbell, the champion of 
immersion, failed to find any evidence of water-baptism for at 
least two generations succeeding the apostles, thus presenting 
to our view the somewhat ludicrous attitude of Baptists and 
Pedo-Baptists contending with each other about the form and 
substance of a vacuum. We have also found Neander re- 
peatedly asserting that infant baptism was not practised in 
the Gentile churches to any appreciable extent for more than 
three centuries after Christ. Yet infant baptism was a 
general custom where baptism was practised at all, from the 
fourth to the sixteenth century ! And it is demonstrated 
that infant baptism of proselytes was as common as adult 
baptism in all the Jewish history. Also, that from a revived 
Judaism, the whole scheme and apostacy of the Papacy, with 
all its ritual idolatry, arose. 

Yet Nonconformists, Protestants, and heretics abounded. 
Conkling, in his work on " Baptism," says (p. 230) : 

"Irenasus, Epiphanius, Philastrius, Austen, and Theodoret, each wrote cata- 
logues of all the sects and heresies that had arisen in the Church, but there ore 
none found who reject infant baptism, unless such AS reject water-baptism 

ALTOGETHER." 

Now here is a sword given us, like the Scottish broadsword, 
that cuts two ways at the same time. Neander affirming that 
11 



162 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

infant baptism was almost unknown in the Greek and Eastern 
churches for about four centuries after Christ, which being 
granted, we have the proof that water-baptism was almost un- 
known among the same churches during this period. Thus 
we may extend Alexander Campbell's search after immersion 
to the Pedo-Baptist's search after infant baptism, reaching 
ages beyond where even Mr. Campbell could find no baptism 
at all and meet the same result. 

We find it making but slow advance at most ; Theodoret 
announces that several of these sects he named rejected 
water-baptism ; nor does he say that he did not himself 
reject it ! 

And as to the heresies found, we presume that any writer 
in either of these " sects " would have found the same number 
of " heresies," and would have ranked Theodoret and the other 
heresy-hunters named among the heretics. " Orthodoxy " in 
all ages has been " my doxy" while " heterodoxy " has been 
found wherever "your doxy" differs from mine! But the 
assumption has not always been recorded thus on the tab- 
lets of heaven; a more impartial record has been kept 
there. 

By a slip of the pen, undoubtedly, Tertullian recognized 
the presence of these non-baptizers (a. d. 200). Robinson, 
the Baptist historian, on p. 72, writes thus : " Says Tertullian 
to some who denied water-baptism : 

"You act naturally, for you are serpents, and serpents love deserts and avoid 
water ; but we, like fishes, are born in the water, and are safe by continuing 

in a: " 

Tertullian, no doubt, thought this was shrewd, but it simply 
reveals his trust in the waters of baptism. His opponent 
might as fairly have chosen his simile, and compared his 
water-loving opponent to the eel that loves the mire at the bot- 
tom of the stagnant lake, and himself to the dove that delights 
to skim the heavenly vault and bask in the sunlight of 
God. 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 163 

Tertullian's opposition to infant baptism greatly dis- 
turbed the Judaizing clergy. Robinson notes it by say- 
ing: 

H The delay of baptism (until near death) greatly distressed the clergy; they 
perpetually harped upon it," p. 229. 

Of course these clergy, in due time, Oyprianized those they 
taught respecting early baptism.* 

And Neander deals rather roughly with the " apostolic 
tradition " plea for infant baptism, as we are disposed to do 
with the apostolic example plea for water-baptism in any form. 
In his "Planting and Training of the Church" (p. 102), he 
says: 

" If we wish to ascertain from whom such an institution was originated, we 
should say, certainly not immediately from Christ himself. . . . Was it from 
an injunction given by the earlier apostles ? But among the Jewish Christians 
circumcision was held as the seal of the covenant, hence they had much less 
occasion to moke use of baptism ! This would agree least of all with the pe- 
culiar Christian characteristics of the Apostle Paul, he who says of himself 
that Christ ' sent him not to baptize, but to preach the gospel ; ' he who always 
kept his eye fixed on one thing, justification by faith, and so carefully avoided 
everything that could give a handle or support to the notion of justification 
by outward things — how could he set up infant baptism against the circum- 
cision that continued to be practised by the Jewish Christians?" 

But how does Neander not see that his reasoning bears as 
strongly against the supposition that Paul in any manner "set 
up " adult as infant baptism, in lieu of circumcision ? If cir- 
cumcision was the " seal " of the covenant, why need baptism 
at all ? especially as this was as " outward " as circumcision, 
and could "justify " no more than could circumcision. Did 
not Paul ever tell both Jew and Gentile that the " seal " was 
the " Holy Spirit of promise ? " 

* Says Neandek : " Tertullian's opposition to infant baptism is proof that 
it was not then usually considered an apostolic ordinance, for in that case 
he would hardly have ventured to speak so strongly against it." Yet we may 
add, he speaks as strongly against the baptism of young and unmarried persons, 
lest they commit some sin after baptism, and it be too late for baptism to wash 
it away. Is this evidence that he considered baptism, at any age, apostolic, or 
a divine command ? 



164 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

But Tertullian himself contends for baptism, and laments 
the Gnostic rejection of it. He says : 

" Some affecting superior sanctity among the Gnostics wholly omit bap- 
tism." 

So he complains of the Caianites of Egypt, and Quintilli- 
anists of Greece, that they claimed to be so holy as not to need 
the healing waters of baptism. So Wall, vol. i. p. 397, 
alludes to " some wicked people who were opponents of bap- 
tism." Now this was, doubtless, decisive proof of their 
" wickedness " according to the Judaic standard ; yet on the 
next page he declares that the prophets of the Old Testament 
did not baptize — but we presume they were justified since the 
Jewish priests did ! 

Dr. Robinson's Vision once Retroverted. 
And Robinson, the Baptist historian (p. 46), caught a 
glimpse so far back, for once, as to speak of baptism as " a rite 
instituted of God for the Jews ! " and then hear him compli- 
ment its working among that people : 

" The best use that can be made of a knowledge of the Jewish baptisms is 
to pity their apostasy, and to set them an example of renouncing the fatal 
error from which all their ills originally proceeded— i. e., the traditions of en- 
thusiasts who issued laws to bind the conscience, and who, like some Etruscan 
statues, have not one thing to recommend them to attention except their an- 
tiquity." 

Now it may be assumed that the above anathema upon the 
devoted heads of Jewish baptizers comes from the fact that 
these dear apostate Jews have not followed (have never 
adopted) Dr. Robinson's theory of baptism ; hence they are in 
" fatal error " and follow blind guides. 

But he forgets that their following their Bath Col. and their 
traditions is both a consequence and a cause of their apostasy 
from God, even while most punctiliously following their ritual 
laws, and practising their baptisms, as they in their original 
simplicity understood them. Their baptisms did not save 
them. 



GLEAMS OF THE CONFLICT. 165 

And the sprinklers and imniersers of the Christian Church 
have never found the evidence of the truth of the following 
citation Dr. Robinson has attributed to a bishop of the third 
or fourth century : 

" Jesus took away the sin of the world by being baptized in the river Jor- 
dan. . . . When David said, 'Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow/ it 
was as much as to say, ' Lord, thou hast cleansed me from the sin of my father, 
Adam, by taking his flesh on thyself, dipping it in the font, and washing it 
in the river/ To an objector, who asks, 'What is there in baptism except 
water, chrism, and a white garment?' he replies, 'Christ, by being dipped in 
Jordan, sanctified those waters. Baptismal water is water of remission. At 
the font you receive not a Jewish but an evangelical sign. That day, that 
hour, when you come out of the laver you have within yourself a perpetually 
running water, and daily remission. Art thou defiled after baptism ? Is thy 
heart vitiated? thy heart contaminated? Dip thyself in abundance of tears 
let it be a living water overflowing every. fibre.'" 

Reader, you have in this extract a complete illustration of 
the teachers of the second and third centuries, among the 
ritualists, that taught water-baptism for any cause. Our 
Saviour, who was baptized by John, a Jewish priest, is here 
adduced as thereby sanctifying the waters of baptism forever, 
so that we also, who are baptized, obtain a " daily remission," 
for " baptismal water is water of remission." This is still the 
creed doctrine of all the Oriental churches, the Papacy, the 
Lutheran and the Episcopal churches. 

But mark, it is a most singular fact that neither in the 
above citation nor scarcely in any extant teaching of the 
fathers is there a reference to any command of Christ or the 
apostles as enjoining water-baptism ; thus evincing that these 
fathers, at least, laid little stress upon the " Great Commis- 
sion " as enjoining water-baptism, and that it was not unwit- 
tingly resumed as an element of Judaism. 

Particularly is this fact noticeable touching infant baptism, 
since, in respect to that, the greatest of the fathers, as Augus- 
tine and Tertullian, but refer to tradition as the basis on which 
it is to be commended. When Christ said, " Go, teach all 
nations, baptizing them," surely this would include all classes, 



166 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

infants and adults, the sick and the healthy, if it referred to 
water-baptism at all. 

But not only were the Eastern churches very slow in adopt- 
ing the Jewish ritual law, but from that section, according to 
Neander, were continually arising dissenters and protestauts, 
who sought to roll back the incoming wave of ritualism that 
threatened to engulf and sink all that was spiritual and 
saving in the Christian Church. 

Thus the living Church was full oft forced to become pro- 
testants and dissenters. 



CHAPTER V. 

CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEKS — THE TRUE 
CHURCH FOUND. 

JUSTIN MARTYR, A. D. 140.* 

It is a notable fact that the first to break the long silence 
respecting baptism, that succeeded the apostolic era, was Justin 
Martyr, and that in doing so he has in full corroborated all 
that we have claimed respecting the post-apostolic rejection 
of water-baptism, and the sentiment of the church generally, 
as adverse to it. 

In his dialogue with Trypho, the Jew (a document of un- 
doubted authenticity), he attributes the baptism of water to 
the Jews, as their baptism, and claims for the Church of Christ 
an infinitely superior baptism, by which we are really purified. 
He declares water-baptism and circumcision " useless," marks 
clearly the transition from the legal Jewish Sabbath to the 
" Lord's Day " rest, and tells Trypho that the whole cere- 
monial law was given to the Jews as a token for good if they 
were obedient, but as marking them for destruction if they 
were disobedient and violators of their national charter. We 
quote from " Dialogue," Oxford ed., p. 85, etc. : 

"You (Trypho) need a second circumcision, and yet you think much of that 
of the flesh. The new law (the Christian) commands you to keep a perpetual 
Sabbath, and you rest in one day and think that you are religious, not think- 
ing why the commandment was given you. . . . If an}' be an adulterer, let him 
repent, and then he will have kept a true and pleasant Sabbath of God. If any 
has unclean hands, let him wash, and he will be pure. For it was not, surely, 

* N. B. — The date given in connection with the nomenclature of the non- 
ritualists is designed to mark tho period when they were most active and in- 
fluential. 

167 



168 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

to the bath that Isaiah sent you to wash away murder and those other sins 
from which all the waters of the sea cannot cleanse you, hut, as one would 
think, there was of old the very washing of salvation which he spoke of, viz.: 
that which is for those who repent, and who are no longer purified by the blood 
of goats and sheep, or by the ashes of a heifer, or by the offerings of fine flour, 
but by faith through the blood and death of Christ, who died for this very pur- 
pose." 

Justin here quotes, in proof, Isaiah, 52d and 53d chap- 
ters, and expatiates upon what they teach. On p. 87 he says : 

" Through the baptism of repentance and knowledge of God, therefore, which 
was instituted for the sins of the people, as Isaiah says, we have believed, and 
we know the same baptism which he preached, and which alone is able to cleanse 
those who repent, is the water of life. 

But the cisterns which you have digged for yourselves are broken cisterns, 
and unable to be of any use to you, for what profit is there in the baptism 

WHICH CLEANSES THE FLESH AND THE BODY ALONE ? LET YOUR SOULS BE WASHED 
FROM ANGER AND FROM COVETOUSNESS, FROM ENVY AND HATRED, AND THE 
WHOLE BODY WILL BE PURE. 

"And this is the signification of the unleavened bread, viz. : that you should 
abstain from the old works of evil leaven. You, however, receive everything 
in a carnal sense, and think it to be serving God if you do such works, while 
your souls are filled with deceitfulness and every kind of evil. Hence God 
commends you to the practice of new works." 

Justin here quotes Isaiah Iv. 3 and to the end of the 
chapter. Also, in the same connection, quotes Deut. x. 12 
to the end of the chapter, for the true circumcision — the " cir- 
cumcision of the heart." Then quotes Lqv. xxvi. 40, 41, to 
show the judgments denounced on the disobedient, and then 
declares that the fleshly circumcision was given the Jews as a 
mark to distinguish them from other nations, and from Chris- 
tians, that they alone might suffer the inflictions God brought 
upon them for rejecting Christ. He tells Trypho, in this con- 
nection, that others, besides Jews, dishonor Christ because of 
the blasphemies of the Jews against Christ. 

He then quotes Isaiah i. 16, " Wash you, make you clean, 
put away the evil of your doings," and adds : 

"God thus commands you to wash in this laver, and to be circumcised with 
the true circumcision;" and adds, "For we should practise your circumcision 
of the flesh, and should keep the Jewish Sabbaths, and all the feasts, did we 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 169 

not know for what they were enjoined you, viz. : for your sins and the hardness 
of your hearts. For if we endure all that is inflicted on us by wicked men, and 
evil spirits, and yet, in the midst of our indescribable modes of death and torture, 
pray that those who so torment may find mercy, why, Tryjjho, should we refuse 
to observe such rites as -would do us no injury ? such as fleshly circumcision and 
keeping of the Sabbaths and festivals ? It is because circumcision is not 
necessary for all, but only for the Jews, that, as I said before, you might un- 
dergo your present justly merited sufferings. 

XOR DO WE RECEIVE YOUR USELESS BAPTISM OF CISTERNS, FOR SUCH BEARS NO 

relation to the baptism op life. . . . You who are ci reuincised in the flesh 
require our circumcision, while we who possess this have no need of yours." 

Nothing can be clearer than that Justin here contemplates 
circumcision and baptism as joint and collateral partners in 
the fleshly ritual — in the economy of Moses ever united ; and 
both equally, and for the same reason, to be laid aside. Can 
any Christian teacher deny this ? Hear him further: to jus- 
tify his rejection of all these Jewish rites, he proceeds to enu- 
merate the worthies who were saved prior to the giving of 
the ritual law. He specifies the case of " Adam (created 
without circumcision, thus proving it not necessary), then of 
Abel, Enoch, Noah, Lot, Melchisedek, etc., saved without cir- 
cumcision, the latter having received tithes from Abraham, 
the father of circumcision" He then quotes from the prophet 
Hosea, to show that the Jews alone needed circumcision, 
" that they should not be a people of God, and not a nation," 
and that others not thus marked by this mark of the curse 
should take -their places in God's favor. 

He thus keenly suggests that all High Church ritualists are, 
by their very badges of ceremonialism and trust in the exter- 
nal, thereby known as " not the people of God." On p. 134, 
Justin asserts that Christ ended John's baptism, and else- 
where gives an account of the Jewish baptism in the name of 
one God, the " ineffable" name, at the "laver," and says this 
was called the " illumination" because they who receive it, 
and know the meaning, are "enlightened in their minds." 

But Justin adds, referring to this very baptism of the Jews 
(and quoting Isaiah i. 1G) : 

" Our baptism is not of the flesh; but the devil, hearing of this baptism tnn~ 1> 



170 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

by the prophet Isaiah, instigated those who enter into their temples, and who 
were about to come to them, to sprinkle themselves, and to wash their whole 
persons, imitating Moses and the prophet I have mentioned." 

This after-reasoning implies that thus Satan deceives them 
by turning their attention from the inward to the outward 
baptism. 

On p. 105, Justin adds : 

" He (God) has shown his good-will toward the Gentiles also, and receives sacri- 
fices from us more readily than from you (Jews). What need have I, then, of 
circumcision, who have the testimony of God in my favor? How can I require 
that baptism (of water), who have been already baptized with the Holy Ghost t . . 
And so many righteous men who kept none of these legal observances have 
still obtained the express approval of God himself." 

Thus we see that if any one would obliviate the fact that 
baptism was really a concomitant of circumcision in the 
Jewish ritual, and would therefore urge that baptism has now 
supplanted circumcision, Justin sanctions no such plea, for he 
repeatedly groups both together, and folding them in the same 
Jewish shroud lays them in the grave together. 

One other paragraph from this giant witness against the 
Judaisms that afterward so inundated the Roman Church, and 
we must pass. On p. 122, Justin says : 

"So, I continued, if I were to sum all the ordinances which were commanded 
by Moses, I should prove them to be types, and symbols, and presignifications 
of what was afterwards to happen to Christ and those who were foreknown as be- 
lievers in him; but since the things which I have already enumerated seem to 
me sufficient, I omit them and pass on to the next point in order, viz. : 'As cir- 
cumcision began from Abraham, and the Sabbath, sacrifices and feasts from 
Moses, and I have proved that these were commanded on account of the hardness 
of your hearts (and ascribe it to your own wickedness that God can be thus falsely 
accused of not having always taught the same righteous (gospel) doctrines to 
all) ; so it was requisite that they (these sacrifices, feasts, etc.) should cease in 
Him who was born of the race of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, and of the 
family of David — Christ, the Son of God, who, it was preached, should come 
as the everlasting law and new covenant for the whole world. . . . We, too, who 
through him have come to God, receive not this fleshly circumcision, but the 
spiritual one, which Enoch and those like him observed. This, since we had 
been sinners, we received by means of baptism (not the fleshly, which he has 
oft told us is ( useless,' but the ' spiritual') through the mercy of God; and it 
would be good for all to receive it likewise." 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 171 

Having before enumerated those who were saved without 
circumcision, he concludes this ejection of the Mosaic ritual 
with a list of the worthies saved in the absence of it — i. e., be- 
fore it was needed or given. He quotes Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob, Noah, Job, Sarah, Kebekah, Rachel, Leah, etc., down 
to Moses, who himself also was worthy to be the mediator of 
the old covenant, with all its ritual, before that ritual had 
been appointed. 

Justin Martyr, whose teachings concerning rituals we 
have thus quoted, was born at Sychem, in Palestine, and 
preached there, also in Egypt, Asia Minor, and at Rome, and 
doubtless reflected the sentiments of the non-Jewish Christians 
of his age in all those lands. He was a man of extensive 
learning and influence, and a writer of two apologies for the 
Christians, addressed to the Roman emperors.* A work on 
external baptism, attributed to him, is undoubtedly spurious, 
as might well be judged from what is here cited, and as has 
also been proved and admitted by the best scholars. See 
Tomhes' debate with Marshall, in a work entitled Religious 
Thought in England, pp. 217-227. f 

It may be added that Tatian, an Assyrian by birth, and 
an eminent scholar, having read a portion of the Scriptures, 
became convinced of the truth of their teachings, and embraced 
Christianity. He proceeded to Rome, and put himself under 
the teachings of Justin Martyr, and like him became eminent 
for piety and temperance in all things; like him rejected the 
Jewish rituals, dissuaded from the baptism of water and all 
use of wine. After the martyrdom of Justin, he became a 
teacher in Rome for some years, and afterwards returned as a 
missionary of Christ to his own country. Mosheim says of him : 

'■ His severe . . . system of discipline procured for his followers, of whom 
Tatian had soon to boast of great numbers in Syria, the people of which country 

[ Nevertheless, he was beheaded at Rome in 165, by the command of one of 
those emperors. 

t But none question the authenticity of Justin Martyr's "Dialogue icitJi 
Trijpho." 



172 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

naturally lean to an austerity of manners, and subsequently in other regions, 
the denomination of Encratites, or ' The Continent;' JSydroparastates, or 
' Water-drinkers ; ' ' Apotactites/ or Renunciants, i. e., of this world's goods 
and sometimes Tatianites, referring to the author of the sect. This sect con- 
tinued until the fourth century, and here, and among the Gnostics, the Manichees, 
and the Euchites, we find the true temperance reformers of the early centuries 
and all rejecting the baptism of water." 

Ignatius, who wrote even earlier than Justin Martyr, and 
during his earlier life was cotenrporary with the Apostle John, 
thus writes to the Magnesians. Speaking of Judaism, he 
says: 

" Lay aside, therefore, the evil, the old, the sour leaven, and be ye changed 
to the new leaven, which is Jesus Christ. Be ye settled in him, lest any ono 
among you should be corrupted, since by your savor you shall be convicted. 
It is absurd to profess Jesus Christ and to Judaize. For Christianity did not 
embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity." 

Iren^eus, three-fourths of a century later, writes : 

" The Mosaic law was not established for righteous men. Abraham, with- 
out circumcision, and Lot, receiving salvation from God ; they had the meaning 
of the law written in their hearts ; but when righteousness and love to God 
became extinct in Egypt, God did necessarily reveal himself, that thou mightst 
know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God. God, standing in no need of anything from man, 
speaks thus by Moses, 'And what doth the Lord require of thee but to do 
justly,' " etc. 

Tertullian, also, cotemporary with Irenseus, says : 

" Christ's disciples could only baptize with John's baptism — Christ's was not 
established. Hence Christ did not baptize." 

GNOSTIC PROTEST AGAINST THE INCOMING 
PAPACY, A. D. 240. 

The Great Dissent of early ages against a reinstatement 
of Judaism was found among the Gnostics. Says Neander 
(vol. i. p. 367) : 

" It cannot be denied that faith, taken according to the outward view of it, 
often placed itself in direct opposition to the strivings after knowledge, by 
holding fast on everything as positive as given from without, as an aggregate 
of separate positive doctrines and precepts. In Gnosticism the opposition be- 
tween an esoteric sacerdotal doctrine and an exoteric religion of the people, 



CHKOXICLES OF THE NON-BAPTTZERS. 173 

between a philosophic religion and a popular faith, has its necessary ground in the 
fact that antiquity (/". e., the old dispensation) was destitute of any independent 
means adapted alike to all the stages of human culture, or satisfying the relig- 
ious want. The emancipation of religion from all dependence on the elements 
of the world, as well as from all dependence on the wisdom of the world, which 
knew not God, made Gnosticism a precursor of Protestantism. Marcion," he 
adds, in this connection, li may be styled a yjrecursor of Protestantism. Pro- 
testantism sprang out of the Pauline conception of faith once more restored 
and reinstated in its rights. At the basis of this whole theory lies the truth 
that Gnosticism, in so far as it was a reaction against, the Jewish element that 
had become mixed in with Christianity, was a precursor of Protestantism." 

The purport of the above seems to be that the Judaizing 
.bishops and clergy dogmatized their own interpretation of 
revelation in behalf of "positive doctrines " and externals in 
religion. The Gnostics looked away from these dogmas and 
externals, looked within (esoterically) for a rational religion. 
They were willing to believe in the supernatural (in mani- 
fested faith), but they wanted other authority than the dog- 
matism of Judaizers for their faith. They asked a reason. 
They would neither trust to worldly wisdom nor to an exhibi- 
tion of rites as the basis of their faith ! 

As examples of these Gnostic philosophers, who were also 
Christian teachers, Neander gives an extended account of 
Valentine, Basilides, and Marcion, whom he pronounces very 
holy men, and highly commends their philosophical anti-Jew- 
ish view of religion. Of Marcion he says, vol. i. p. 461 : 

"In Marcion we behold a reaction of that Pauline type of doctrine, reclaim- 
ing its rightful authority against the strong leaning of the Church to the side 
of James and Peter— a reaction of the Christian consciousness reasserting the 
independence acquired for it by the labors of Paul against a new combination 
of the Jewish, and Christian elements; a reaction of the Protestant spirit 
against the Catholic element now swelling in the bud. He (Marcion) 
appropriated Christianity in a way somewhat independent of tradition. So, in 
the after development of his Christian views, he ever pursued this independent 
direction, and was unwilling to subject himself to any human traditions. Per- 
haps," says Neander, " it was the majesty of Christ beaming upon him from 
the survey of his life, and the contemplation of his words, whereby he was 
drawn to Christianity. . . . Hence the striving might have arisen in him to 
purify Christianity from the foreign Jewish, elements with which it had been 
mixed, and to restore it once more to its primitive form." 



174 KITUALISM DETHKONED. 



Extent of Marcion's Protest. 

The reform that Marcion sought may not have taken into 
view all the elements of Judaism that should have been dis- 
hevelled from the Christian Church. He may not, at first, at 
least, have seen that it would require the rejection of the Jew- 
ish purifyings,* as Paul himself was not so careful at first to 
reject them, and Luther, even, left the Papal creed unchanged 
in this respect, with the doctrine of baptismal regeneration 
still glaring upon us. 

But it is certain that most of the Gnostics that followed, 
making practical the teachings of Marcion, did reject water- 
baptism. Of those who did thus reject this element of Juda- 
ism, we may specify the Prodicians, the Carpocratians, the 
Antitactites, the Valentinians, the Quintillianists, and the 
Caianites. This Gnostic philosophy, with its different phases, 
and the different teachers, continued for centuries, and in 
Greece and Northern Africa constituted a large portion of 
the Christian Church. 

Mosheim, it is true, says some hard things about the Gnos- 
tics, as he does of all sects that veer from the regular ritual- 
istic line of succession. Nor will we assert that some of the 
Gnostic sects were not wanting in respect to a full conformity 
to the moral law. Their aim at Christian perfectibility might 
have been marred, in certain cases, by a letting doivn of the 
standard of moral perfection, as in the case of the Valentinians 
and Caianites. But their ostensible aim at the standard of 
moral perfection rendered large numbers of them ascetics, to the 
degree of mortifying the body and its appetites to the extreme 
of totally crucifying many of the fleshly appetites.f Monasti- 
cism (in its earliest and purest stages) was rife among them ; 

* He seems to have initiated priests or the perfects with the ceremonial puri- 
fying. 

f The Religious Encyclopedia says : " The greatest part of this sect adopted 
very austere rules of life; recommended rigorous abstinence, and prescribed 
severe bodily mortifications, with a view of purifying and exalting the mind." 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 175 

none that aspired to the estate of the perfects was permitted 
to marry, or heap up earthly riches. Marcion did permit a 
sort of conventional baptism to the perfects as a mark of pecu- 
liar sanctity ; but this was permitted to none that married, nor 
ever required of catechumens or infants. Of course, he based 
it on no divine or human law, but used it as a fit conventional 
custom in such cases as required the expression of special 
sanctity. Meander, better versed in Gnostic history than 
Mosheim, affirms that they manifested the highest extant type 
of the Christian life in their day. He also asserts that from 
these sprung the original germ of the mystic form of piety, and 
the Protestantism of the twelfth to the sixteenth century, that 
shed such a halo of light, and was almost the only embodiment 
of Christianity of those centuries. Neander affirms that the 
impeachment of the morals of those early dissenting sects was 
generally traceable to their enemies, and without foundation. 

The Gnostics did not teach heretically respecting Christ, as 
Mosheim intimates. They undoubtedly carried their philoso- 
phy too far, and undertook to explain how and when the divine 
and human nature of Christ came into union ; some fixing it 
at the period of his baptism, others at his death ; but they all 
received Christ as the Divine Saviour, and were unquestionably 
the most devout and spiritual, intelligent and exemplary of 
Christ's professed people in their generation. If history be 
true, their piety and self-denial should have put to the shame 
the Judaizers, and those apostatizing to the pagan ritualisms 
of that era. 

Prevalence and Character of the Gnostics. 
" The Greeks seek after wisdom," says Paul ; and let it be 
remembered that the term " Gnostic " simply means " the 
knowing ones," and indicates that in the Christian Church 
(i. e., after their conversion to Christianity) the Greeks did 
not cease to seek after wisdom. The Gnostic Christians com- 
prised nearly all the Greek Christians and those who spoke 
that language, who were so numerous in the second century 



176 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

that the term Gnostic was oft used only as another name for 
the Gentile Christian Church. And as it is admitted by all 
that the Gnostics generally rejected water-baptism, it follows 
that the Greek churches in their day generally rejected 
water-baptism. And let it be noted (and we learn it from 
Mosheim, p. 107 Bead's Mosheim) that Gnosticism waned as 
night wanes by the rising day. 

The Gnostics were from the first the protestants against the 
transplanting of Judaism, and they continued so to be. They 
were of an indefinitely broader mind, and took a more philo- 
sophic view of Christianity than did the Judaizers. The nar- 
rowing boundaries of creeds, and rituals, and dogmatic state- 
ments of speculative doctrines, like all enlarged and philosophic 
minds, they overleaped almost infinitely, aiming as far as their 
finite apprehension would permit to look upon all these rites, 
and schools, and systems, as God himself looks down upon 
them with complacency toward all, of every name, that in 
true faith and holiness derived their spiritual life from him. 
So, with the protesting witnesses for Christ all along, they rose 
above the sultry and murky atmosphere of rituals and dog- 
matic theology, into the serener, purer, more expansive atmos- 
phere of heavenly life and love ; and as it was ever of old, 
"he that was born after the flesh (the creed and ritual only) 
persecuted him that was born after the spirit," so it was in all 
these ages. 

Origen, Eusebius, and Dyonisius of Alexandria, examined 
and more lucidly confuted the Jewish notions, protesting 
against which was the only occasion of the Gnostic existence 
as a school of theology. Thus, their opponents " approximating 
the Gnostic doctrines," the two schools were merged into one, 
save in respect to ritualism, touching which the Gnostic non- 
ritual conception appeared in other forms about to be named. 

Mosheim's Church History Criticised. 
In passing, we cannot well refrain from expressing our utter 
reprehension of the matter and manner of Mosheim 's history, 



CHRONICLES OF THE XON-BAPTIZEES. 177 

so far as it may be used as an authority in an honest search 
for the true Church of Christ. It is rather a history of 
dogmas. Mosheim appears to have placed himself in a certain 
attitude of assumed technical orthodoxy ; cuts and chisels 
every sect and system by the measuring line of his own creed, 
without reference (decisively) to the manifested life of God in 
those be criticises. He gives to an almost interminable extent 
the history of speculative opinions, and ever finds the true 
Church where the theology was sound a la Mosheim, while all 
else is heresy. He forgets that "sound doctrine," according 
to Paul, is the " doctrine which is according to godliness 
(Godlikeness)," and that which secures obedience to the moral 
laic, and not to a certain ceremonial law. Neander differs al- 
most infinitely from Mosheim in this respect, since, while he 
too gives the history of dogmas and speculative opinion with 
much more seeming charity and fairness than does Mosheim, 
he dwells the most extensively upon the fruits each system 
bears in the lives of its adherents. 

A Clue to the True Living Church. 

Thus we have a clue to the true living Church of Christ, 
where a history of dogmas leaves us altogether in a quandary. 
If later investigations be correct in their results, Mosheim has 
oft garbled history to the prejudice of his declared heretics ; 
since Neander's record of the same classes and teachers oft 
differs from Mosheim's as heaven differs from earth. Casually 
Mosheim rises above those narrow prejudices, and gives the 
schismatics from his popular church the reputation of the 
noble and the praiseworthy. But this is rare. 

Dr. Wall charges both Papists and Protestants with garb- 
ling history and falsifying records respecting baptism, quoting 
the ancient writers only partially; which he calls "a great 
wickedness," as it prolongs the controversy on the subject, and 
renders it impossible for those whose reading is more limited 
to know the truth on the subject ; but he does not tell us how 
much himself omits of the early history of the question, thus 



178 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

causing many to misread the part he does record. Mosheim, 
from a manifest bias toward " Church order " and " Church 
ordinances," seems incapable of reading the early records on 
this subject with cando.r. Neander, being a Jew as well as a 
Christian, saw and more fully admitted the facts and bearings 
of the question. 

Even Dr. Read, the editor of the latest revised edition of 
Mosheim, laments, as do we, his remissness in giving the 
history of the true spiritual Church, in the following 
manner : 

"It is much to be regretted, that in reviewing the history of religion in each 
century, Mosheim had not given a sketch of the vicissitudes of spiritual Chris- 
tianity, and of the influence of real piety and godliness upon the habits, both 
of thought and life, of professing adherents of the gospel. He never leads us 
to the true interior of the Church of Christ, to exhibit the mode in which evan- 
gelic truth was appreciated by Christian minds at different periods. The his- 
torian, indeed, suvvej'S the pulpit, hut he never descends to the congregation, 
or depicts its operation in remodelling individual character. He draws no 
sufficiently distinct line of demarcation between real religion and a mere nominal 
Christianity, too prevalent in each age, between spiritual worship and the cum- 
brous ritual which was generally SO popular, asd so rigidly enforced 
and practised. . . . The Christian reader longs to know, not merely whether 
the technical teaching of the Christian Church was sound and Scriptural, but 
whether its value was duly appreciated by the people; whether they "received 
the truth in the love of it/' delighted in the exercises of spiritual worship, and 
sought to adorn their faith by lives of true self-denial and beneficence! For 
information upon these points we must look beyond the pages of Mosheim." 

Mosheim on the Influx op Ritualism. 

Yet even Mosheim gives us a picture (dark enough) of the 
inflowing tide of ritualism, as it, by degrees, prevailed to the 
perversion of the Gentile churches ; and as he traces the 
Church genealogy through these perverted churches, perhaps 
there is no cause for wonder that he does not oftener treat upon 
the spiritual life of the Christian Church, for he found very 
little manifestation of such life in the line of history he pur- 
sued. Of course, heretics, be they ever so holy, must not be 
mistaken for the true Church ! 

But hear him descant upon the perverting influence of 



CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 179 

ritualism in the (true !) Church in the early centuries. We 
quote from Part ii. chap. 4, paragraph 1 : 

" It is certain that to religious worship, both public and private, many rites 
-were added, without necessity, and to the great offence of sober and good men. 
The principal cause of this 1 readily look for in the perverseness of mankind, 
■who are more delighted with the pomp and splendor of external forms than 
with the true devotion of the heart ; and who despise whatever does not gratify 
their eyes aud ears. Also, there is good reason to suppose that the Christian 
bishops multiplied sacred rites for the sake of rendering the Jeios and the 
Pagans more friendly to them, for both had been accustomed to numerous and 
splendid ceremonies from their infancy, and had no doubt that they constituted 
an essential part of religion. Hence, when they saw the new religion to 
be destitute of such ceremonies they thought it too simple, and therefore despised 
it. The simplicity of the worship which Christians offered to the Deity had 
given occasion to certain calumnies, spread abroad both by the Jews and Pagan 
priests. The Christians were pronounced atheists, because they were destitute of 
temples, altars, victims, ji'^sts, and all the pomp in which the vulgar suppose 
the essence of religion to consist. To silence this accusation the Christian doctors 
thought they must introduce some external rites, which would strike the senses of 
the people, so that they could maintain that they really had all those things of 
which Christians were charged with being destitute, though under different 
forms. Also, it was well known that in the books of the New Testament, 
various parts of the Christian religion are expressed by terms borrowed from 
the Jewish laws, and are in some measure compared with the Jewish rites. In 
process of time, either from ignorance or motives of policy, the majority main- 
tained that such phraseology was not figurative, but accordant with the nature 
of things, and to be understood in its proper sense. The bishops were at first 
called high priests, and the presbyters, priests, and deacons, Levites. In a little 
time, those to whom these titles were, given maintained that they had the same 
rank and dignity, and possessed the same rights and privileges with those who 
bore these titles under the Mosaic dispensation. Also, from the Greek Mysteries 
the Christians were led to claim similar mysteries, and they began to apply the 
terms used in the Pagan mysteries to Christian institutions, particularly bap- 
turn and the Lord's Supper ! They also introduced the other rites designated 
in those terms, and a large part of the Christian observances of this (second) 
century had the appearance of the Pagan mysteries >" 

This is Dr. Mosheim's indorsed and valid Church of the 
second century ; and if he had said, as he fully implies in the 
above, that the Greeks and Asiatics, who had been Pagans, 
took the orders of their priests, the forms of their temples, and 
their baptisms from the Pagan temples and mysteries, he would 
have told us the truth in plain words ; what, though covertly 



180 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

seeking to hide, he has actually asserted in the above para- 
graph. 

When they were without " priests " and " temples," and 
worshipped in their spiritual "simplicity," of course they 
were vvichout "sacraments" and other conjoined ceremonies — 
even this very term, sacrament, they borrowed about this time 
from the Pagan mysteries. 

We prefer to trace the Church in a line that more com- 
pletely maintained the "simplicity there is in Christ!" 

MANES OB (MANI) AND THE ORIENTAL 
SCHOOL, A. D. 300. 

Of the school or system of theology and philosophy founded 
by Manes, we are not about to assert or claim its orthodoxy ; 
if tested by modern standards, but only to present to the reader 
a very numerous class of early Christians who rejected a 
ritual or sacramental law. Modern missionaries to Nestoria 
in (Persia) found there a body of Protestant Christians, direct 
descendants from the ancient Christian churches of that region 
(like those of Armenia), yet, it is affirmed, exhibiting more of 
the genuine spirit of Christianity than those of Armenia, 
where John found his seven churches of Asia. The term 
Nestorian, it is true, came from the bishop Nestorius (of Con- 
stantinople), in whose see was Nestoria in the fifth century. 
But this became a part of his diocese only because Manes 
and his successors planted the gospel there in the third and 
fourth centuries. 

As the Jews brought Judaism with them into the Christian 
Church, and as the Greeks brought much of the Grecian (Pla- 
tonic) philosophy with them, so Manes unquestionably 
brought much of the philosophy of the Magi and the sages 
of the East into his philosophic-theologic system. We are 
not aware that the philosophic basis and adjuncts of the 
Christianity of either of these classes of Christians nullified 
or very seriously modified their practical application of the 
precepts and rules of Christianity. The Greek Christians 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 181 

were as exemplary as the Jewish Christians, and the Persian 
and Chaldean Christians as exemplary (if we trust the record) 
as either. Maxes was first eminent as a scholar, a mathema- 
tician, astronomer and geographer ; he excelled also in medi- 
cine, music, and painting In astronomy he was a thousand 
years in advance of his generation ; for he alone in all those 
years taught the spherical form of the earth. After em- 
bracing Christianity he subsidized all his former attainments 
to the work of converting the world to the new religion. 

The new faith and zeal, of course, shone through a glass 
colored with some of his retained philosophic ideas — as must, 
in the nature of the human mind, be the case — but that faith 
and zeal shone brightly. He was ordained a presbyter, and 
as a self-sacrificing witness against a corrupting ritual idolatry 
(in the form of Judaism and also of Paganism) he has 
scarcely been excelled. 

By traducing ritualists and heresy-hunters he was much 
maligned, but his real character shone all the more brightly 
because of the dark background in which his enemies sought 
to place him. 

Notwithstanding all this traduction he became the acknowl- 
edged head of a long line of self-denying and non-ritualistic 
followers, among whom were included a great number of 
witnesses for a holy life and conversation, for "tem- 
perance in all things," and chastity, and death to earthly 
ambitions and pleasures, above most of the present or any 
past age. The " pallor " of their countenances and " lean- 
ness " of their frames showed most conclusively that they 
were"' not to be counted among those who had " lived in pleas- 
ure on the earth and had been wanton ! " This charge, which 
venomed enemies so delighted to allege (insinuate) against the 
Christians, had no background in obvious facts to stand upon 
in relation to this abstemious and ascetic people. 

As a testimonial to the greatness of their numbers and in- 
fluence, it is sufficient to say that Murdock's edition of Mos- 
heim (1851) gives over one hundred and fifty pages to this* 



182 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

branch of the Christian Church. If they were not fully 
Christian, why does Mosheim give them so much space in his 
"Institutes of (Christian) Church History f" True, nearly 
all these pages (150) are occupied with discussions of their 
tenets, but it gleams out all along that they were altogether 
self-denying and zealous in propagating the faith, and spread 
their faith far and wide over western Asia (Persia, Syria, 
Arabia), and into Africa ; and Mosheim adds, into " almost 
all countries of the civilized world" Manes contended with 
Jews, Pagans, and Magians for the faith of Christ as ex- 
pounded by himself. He assailed publicly the religion of 
Zoroaster. Supor, the king, offended at this, and prompted 
by the Magi and priests, determined to put him to death. 
" Manes being informed of the design, fled into Turkestan. 
There he drew many to his party. ... In the meantime the 
King of Persia died, and his son Hormisdas succeeded. 
Manes returned to Persia, the new king received him kindly, 
professed to embrace his religion, and built for him a tower 
wherein he might find protection from his numerous enemies. 
But his tranquillity was short, for Hormisdas died at the end 
of two years, and Varanes, taking the throne, treated Manes 
kindly for a short season, but soon his feelings changed, and 
he determined to destroy him. He allured Manes from the 
fortress in which he was concealed, under pretence of holding 
a discussion with the Magi, when he was seized as a corrupter 
of religion, and some say he was cleaved asunder, but the 
Greeks affirm that he was flayed alive (a. d. 277)." 

He (Manes), as after him did the Manicheans generally, held 
to one God, in Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, mani- 
festly as do the Trinitarians of to-day.* He did not allow 
the books of the Old Testament to be the prescriptive law for 
the Christian Church, and hence rejected all its rituals. 



* He styled himself the Paraclete, by which Mosheim admits that he did not 
mean to claim to be the Holy Ghost, but a great apostle, "sent" of Christ, for 
he elsewhere fully admits the divine nature and work of the Holy Spirit. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 183 

Keaxder affirms that Manes and the Manicheans rejected 
Moses (affirming that his economy had passed away), and re- 
jected baptism* It is unquestionably true that they rejected 
both sacraments, baptism and the Supper, choosing rather to re- 
gard the created heavens and earth as God's " ordinances " to 
be revered, than to " adore " the bread and wine of the sacra- 
men t, as Augustine (a former disciple of Manes, but a later 
opposer of the scheme) admits was the custom of the Sacra- 
mentarians of his day. They used lustrations, as do all 
Eastern nations, whether Christian or not. Like all other 
people, also, they had feasts of fellowship and charity, if they 
listed, and sometimes those received into the class of the elect 
or perfects, which was the sacerdotal class, were permitted to 
receive a lustration, or washing, as significant of the sanctity 
they were about to assume. 

But both Mosheim and Neander agree that nothing of this 
kind was required of them as a sacrament or Church ordi- 
nance, for both virtually affirm that they admitted no such 
obligation. The elect were supposed to be initiated, as the 
higher class, into all the mysteries of the order, and had a right 
to all their social feasts and immunities, from which the audi- 
tors or non-elect, common class, were excluded. In this we 
trace a borrowed element of Paganism, for there were no such 
special immunities even in Judaism. Yet such a " class " 
division of believers was universal among the Gentile Chris- 
tians at this period. But the rigorous discipline and ascetic 
habits of the perfects among the Manicheans prevented any ap- 
proach of envy on the part of the auditors, for comparatively 
few were willing to forego the greater liberties they enjoyed 
for the seclusion, celibacy, and austerity required of the elect. 

* Schaff, in his " Church History," says of the Manicheans, " They repudi- 
ated baptism, considering it useless. The perfects sometimes partook of the 
Supper (he might have said a Supper), yet without wine." Such a festival 
which they observed twice a week does not mark the Christian's sacrament, 
but rather that "feast of charity," common in ancient times, and common for 
a century among our Methodist brethren of later years. 



184 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

As their influence spread and rebuked the laxness of a cor- 
rupt society, rigorous laws were enacted against them, espe- 
cially at Rome. JJioelesian (a. x>. 276) issued a law against 
them, condemning their leaders to the stake, and the common 
people among them to decapitation and the confiscation of 
^lieir property (Neander, vol. i. p. 506;. But this only con- 
cealed the doctrine for a time, for soon many eminent men 
were enlisted under their banners, and for their own defence 
they were sometimes in array against the authorities of the 
East ; whose emperors, also, oft sought to crush them by the 
sword. Theodosius framed a lav/ against heresy, A. d. 382, 
and this was executed against the Manicheans, the first ever 
enacted or executed for such a purpose.* 

But they continued through many centuries as the main 
body of Oriental Christians, and were at length merged in the 
noble band of the Paulicians. 

Yet previously for centuries from among these and the 
Gnostics came forth anti-ritualistic teachers, leaders of schism 
from the popular Romanizing Church continually. Of those 
that thus withdrew and protested, and those that continued to 
protest without ever having given adherence to the ritualists, 
Neander gives frequent and, at times, full accounts. The 
Novations, Donatists, and Eiduchians retained water-baptism 
the two former being immersion ists in the main — the latter 
(the Eutuchians) retaining baptism only for the sake of re- 
taining their place in the Church, as themselves freely 
avowed. 

THE EABLT GENTILE CHURCH OF THE REGU- 
LAR LINE AND ORDER NON-RITUAL— ITS 
LATER APOSTASY. 

Its Early Remission of Baptism. 
But if the foregoing record be counted in any manner a 
record of schisms from the recognized Church of those days 

* But the palm is given to the Priscillianists (also non-ritualists) for having 
been the first to suffer persecution from Christian rulers for heresy of doctrine. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 185 

(and yet can that be a schism which comprises the main body- 
as to numbers?), we will now call attention to that recognized 
central column, in which Mosheim finds the true Church ! 
We shall scarcely find less of the non-ritualistic element here 
than we have found in the aforenamed portions of the Gentile 
churches. 

Thomas Emlyn, formerly (for many years) of the Church 
of England, became convinced that baptism with water was 
no part of the " law of Christ's house," and having extensively 
searched the Patristic record, stated his full conviction that 
baptism in the early centuries of the Christian Church came 
from the Jewish proselyte baptism, and assures us that " the 
baptism of Gentile Christians ceased, as it regarded those de- 
scended from Christian parents" 

And Gale (a Baptist writer of the eighteenth century) 
quotes Babbi Isaac, a Jewish writer of the* early Christian 
era, as remonstrating with the Christian teachers, because, in 
their zeal against Judaism, they had " abolished all the Jewish 
rites, baptism not excepted" 

And Dr. Dale has assured us that the form of "laying the 
hand upon the head (and offering prayer), with no water 
present, was practised in innumerable cases as the form of 
consecration, in lieu of baptism in the early centuries. 

And Wall asserts that the delay of baptism till just before 
death (to wash away the sins of a life-time) occasioned many 
to die without baptism ! " 

But still the Church remained, and the non-baptizing 
churches were long in the ascendency. Tertullian's effort 
among the Judaizers to have baptism delayed till just before 
death had its due effect, and numbers of the most influential 
leaders of the Church were not baptized until they were about 
thirty years of age, and some much older. Gregory the elder, 
and his wife Nouna, both eminently pious — he being called 
to the pastorate of Nazianzen (early in the fourth century) — 
was baptized at maturity ; and his son, Gregory, always a 
catechumen, having been pious from his youth — the son of a 



186 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

bishop — was not baptized till thirty years of age: thus imi- 
tating the Jewish baptisms into the priesthood — for he also 
became a noted minister and writer. Chrysostom, a Syrian, 
born at Antioch, A. D. 347, father and mother both pious — 
his father dying when he was in his cradle, his mother pro- 
vided for his education, and he became learned, eloquent and 
accomplished, and was baptized at twenty-eight. Basil, de- 
scended from two opulent families of Pontus in Cappadocia — 
his ancestors had suffered immense persecutions and losses for 
being Christians, some of them martyred — was baptized at 
twenty-eight. Theodosius, the emperor, born of Christian 
parents, was baptized at maturity. Five emperors (of the 
Eastern realm, at Constantinople) were not baptized until of 
man's age, or old age. These were Theodosius II., as men- 
tioned ; Constantine, not till the age of sixty-two (the year of 
his death) ; Coftstantius, Gratium, and Valentinian II. ; and 
Theodosius L, not at all! And not until middle life — not only 
Basil and the two Gregories — but Nectarius, Ambrose, 
Hierome, Augustine, Alypius, and Adevdatus. Of course, 
these preachers did not preach early baptism — save Augus- 
tine when he came to prescribe a new method of church 
replenishment and salvation by water; nor did they, in their 
congregations, practise early baptism, nor deem that the 
method of entering the visible Church, and there is no evi- 
dence that they proposed baptism only for those who would 
occupy some sphere requiring uncommon sanctity, as was the 
case with the Gnostics and Oriental Church. And Wall 
admits that owing to the postponement of baptism, many 
children were instructed from their youth in the Christian 
religion, but not baptized at all. And all this evinces 
that baptism crept into the Christian Church (the Gentile) 
from the Jewish custom of purifying from sin, or baptizing 
into the priesthood, at the time of entering that office. It 
also suggests the inquiry whether those not about to assume 
a special office of responsibility in the Church would deem 
it incumbent on them to give attention to the subject of bap- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 187 

tism at all. Tertulliau wrote a book on baptism against the 
doctrine of Quiutilla, a female minister, who had been at 
Carthage a little time before, and taught that water-baptism 
was needless, and that faith alone was sufficient ; to whom, he 
intimates, many adhered. And this same Tertullian plead 
earnestly against baptizing infants and unmarried persons, 
and against haste in administering baptism, urging that " true 
faith, whenever present, is sure of salvation," and that the 
soul is "not consecrated by water, but by the truth pro- 
fessed." * Under the influence of such teachings, Theodosius 
and many other eminent persons did not receive baptism 
until they had become aged. (See State Churches, p. 462.) 

Hence when we find Gentile Christians of that day (second 
century) who taught or practised baptism, we need not infer 
that they deemed it an ordinance of Christ, or that they incul- 
cated it as a duty devolving upon all Christians upon profes- 
sion of faith. They conceived it rather as a proper method 
of introduction to the sacerdotal office and to places of special 
sanctity and dignity in the Church, or a preparation for 
death, while, like the Gnostics and Orientals, they imposed no 
such ritual upon the mass of believers as a mode of publicly 



* Tertullian's inconsistency and vacillating is seen in that occasionally he 
is found zealously defending water-baptism, if applied to persons just before 
death, to wash away sins (the sins of a lifetime), and he is much ruffled "Be- 
cause a woman of the Caianite sect has carried a great number with her most 
venomous doctrine, making it her first aim to destroy baptism." He also 
complains as bitterly of a certain woman (Thecla) who claimed authority to 
administer baptism; himself deeming it an overstepping of the province of 
her sex. 

But let the reader say whether (baptizing their candidates naked, as was 
customary in those days) it was not as well omitted, or at least as fit that 
women should bnptize their own sex, if they must be baptized, as that it 
should be done by canonical administrators of the male sex ? Thecla's exam- 
ple was, doubtless, highly commendable in view of the circumstances. And 
Quintilla's course, in wholly rejecting baptism, still more commendable — 
banishing, as it did, the numerous superstitious adjuncts and indecencies 
which were connected with the rite of baptism at that epoch among the Gen- 
tile Christians. 



188 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

avowing their faith in Christ. This is evident also from the 
fact that catechumens, as we have seen, remained generally 
unbaptized, and many that assumed the ministerial office 
received baptism only when about entering upon their work, 
thus, like Israel iu Aaron's day, setting apart the priests by 
special baptisms and anointings (irrespective of prior cere- 
monial uncleanness), which baptisms were not thus required 
of the common people. This is evinced also from the fact that 
infant baptism, when first introduced to the Gentile churches, 
was considered as equivalent to setting apart its recipients to 
the priestly function. Thus Gregory Nazianzen says : " Bap- 
tism is a seal — i. e., a means of securing human nature against 
all moral corruption, by the higher principle of life communi- 
cated." " Hence," says the historian, " he looks upon infant 
baptism as a consecration to the priestly dignity from the 
beginning " — i. e., from the period of this consecration by bap- 
tism. (Neander, vol. iii. p. 665.) 

When, however, Augustine (later) commenced teaching the 
doctrine of original sin, he pointed to baptism as the purifier 
of " human nature," and necessary for all ! And the doctrine 
of baptismal regeneration, and by consequence of infant bap- 
tism, increased with the increase of the doctrine of original 
sin, and (in the rising Papacy) with the devising of this 
method (viz., infant baj^tism), as the most successful in multi- 
plying candidates for the Church.* 



*A11 this is concurrent with. Neander's general testimony as to the non- 
prevalence of infant baptism in the Gentile churches, and also with the testi- 
mony of Dr. Miller of Princeton, who asserts that "During the threescore years 
after the ascension of Christ, ice have no hint of the baptism of infants born of 
Christian parents." 

Indeed, the opposition to infant baptism generally was so great for one hun- 
dred and fifty years after Tertullian, that the Council of Neo-Cesarea, in A. D. 
315, discussed the question, and decided that a pregnant woman might be bap- 
tized, because the baptism did not beach the child. Hence Zonaras and 
Balsamon infer that it was contrary to Greek custom at this period to baptize 
infants. 

Tombes, of England, in public discussion with Marshall, inquires why 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 189 

When and why " Orthodoxy " fiest became a 
" Pervert." 

And when baptism came to be applied to infants, it radiated 
from those centres of ecclesiastical domination, Rome, Alex- 
andria and Antioch, where the metropolitan churches were, 
and was used to increase the revenues and influence of these 
bishops. None of them pretended to appeal to Christ for 
their commission to baptize infants or adults! We learn 
from Mosheim that it was not customary to baptize any in 
those regions, and at the era of which we now speak (third 
and fourth centuries), without previous catechetical instruc- 
tion, and many preferred to omit baptism till just before 
death ; and if any had been baptized in infancy, it was re- 
peated just before death, in the case of some! 

Baptism, on the faith of parents or sponsors, says Mosheim, 
is scarcely mentioned in the third century. And Eusebius, 
who wrote in the fourth century, says that baptism on the 
faith of others sets aside the holy baptism, and sets aside the 
faith and confession that should precede it. Basil became 
anxious that catechumens should not wholly omit baptism, 
iind late in the third century reasons with catechumens thus : 

"Why do you deliberate? What do you wait for? Instructed in the doc- 
trine of Christ from your infancy, are you not acquainted with it? When 
pill you be a Christian f When shall we acknowledge you for our own ? Last 
/ear you deferred baptism to this ! do you now intend to put it off till the 
riext?" (Rob., p. 77.) 



Ignatius, Clemens, Epiphanius, Athanasius, and Eusebius said nothing of 
infant baptism, if such a practice was common in the Christian Church? 

Even Augustine does not say that the baptism of infants was common— his 
own case was an example to the contrary — but taking his cue from Cyprian 
and his council of sixty-six bishops, he, with them, commenced urging bap- 
tism as the nnli/ way of escape from original sin. Hence, it appears that 
infant baptism among Greeks commenced with baptizing proselytes—?, e., chil- 
dren of Pngans only! and not, as now, children of believers only, and ad- 
vanced until assuming that all children were born sinners (unclean), all must 
be purified, or regenerated by baptism ! 



190 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Invalid Claims op the Baptists. 

Now we are not unaware that from such exhortations of 
Basil and the reasonings of Tertullian respecting delay of 
baptism, the Baptists claim that the primitive churches were 
Baptist churches; but how exceedingly far from being such as 
Baptist churches now are, will be seen by the fact that Bap- 
tists baptize into the Church or into the profession of faith. 
"Whereas, from the day that Paul declared that he "was not 
sent to baptize but to preach the gospel," the primitive Chris- 
tians among the Gentiles have practised the very reverse, or 
very diversely from the Baptist ideal. The primitive Chris- 
tians baptized into the priesthood, or for the purifying of sin, 
just as the Jews had done, and not because they had been 
purified, and without any reference to their relation to the 
visible Church ; for certainly those who were exhorted to post- 
pone baptism until just before death (and for a century or two, 
that was continually the exhortation), were not thereby ex- 
horted to continue out of the Church. And when Basil asks : 
" When shall we claim you for our own ? " he refers evidently 
to their coming into the ranks of the "perfects" from being 
mere "auditors" and catechumens. They should enter the 
ranks of those matured in Christian doctrine, discipline and 
instruction. This was somewhat analogous to the modern 
Methodist transition from " probationers " into " full connec- 
tion " of those who had been recognized as "seekers" and as 
Christians also before. And multitudes of these "catechu- 
mens" and "auditors" thus exhorted, both Wall and Mosheim 
testify never were baptized at all. None of the Manichean 
or Marcionite "auditors" were required to be baptized either 
in infancy or at any other age, nor was the neglect of baptism 
censured by any others at that period, as we see, but rather 
commended. No paramount obligation of baptism was urged 
in the Gentile churches, in these centuries, but by an excep- 
tional few that were Judaizers, that is certain. Yet Baptists 
have the boldness to claim the practice of those ages as a 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 191 

sample of the Baptist Church ! The churches were all inde- 
pendent, to be sure, as Neander and Mosheim both fully de- 
clare, but were generally non-ritualists, as the dissenters from 
Home were in all later ages, much resembling the Indepen- 
dent Churches of England and America, only they rejected 
ritual baptism as a law, while the Independents of our day, 
laying less stress upon it than many others, do not reject it. 

Baptism in those early days was never made a condition 
of fellowship, never made a door into the Church, never pro- 
claimed as a New Testament law. Yet infant baptism was 
never wholly laid aside among the Judaizing portion of the 
Church. The idea (a la Jews) was to use baptism to purify 
from sin as we said, and in case of danger of death, baptism 
was administered in infancy by some. Augustine was sick in 
infancy, or youth, and his mother wished him baptized; but 
having some remaining hope of recovery it was omitted, lest 
he should relapse, and the effects of the baptism be lost. He 
did recover, and did relapse into fearful sin, and was not bap- 
tized until just about entering on the ministry. 

" Many others," says Neander, " looking upon baptism as 
the purifier, deferred baptism by their own choice, to give 
themselves up to vices, expecting their future baptism [just 
before death] would purify them, magically annihilating their 
sins." 

"Neither your Church nor mine!" 

Let any one scan the records of the Church in the early 
ages, and he will repronounce with emphasis the words of 
Pressence, of France, who, in order to enlarge his acquain- 
tance with those ages, visited Home and explored the archives 
and records there. A Papal bishop of Paris, after his return, 
asked him what he found there? "NEITHER YOUR 
CHURCH NOR MINE!" was the prompt response. So 
he might have replied to an inquiry from any of the extant 
churches of Christendom : if all their present tenets, customs, 
modes, and ceremonies are taken into the account. And it is for 
a marvel to note, in the Bcligiotis Encyclopedia, the Baptists 



192 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

claiming not only the Novations and Donatists as their proto- 
types, but also the Paulicians and Catharists, both of the latter 
rejecting baptism altogether, through their whole history, and 
the Novations teaching that sins after baptism were unpardon- 
able ; and, therefore, baptism (by immersion to be sure) should 
be delayed till just before death. The Donatists held that 
no baptism but theirs was of any account, and in this they 
resembled the Baptists of our day — whether it be to the praise 
of their charity or not — but they also baptized infants, and 
were never sticklers on that point. 

And hence, is it uncharitable to say that superstition and a 
bliud credulity prompted ail the baptisms (of water) of those 
day?, as a manifestly blind allegiance to baptism governs the 
sects of to-day ? 

Modern Pedo-Baptist Churches xot found there. 

That the Pedo-Baptist churches of to-day were not found 
in those early ages, is manifest from these facts, viz. : In the 
early days when infant baptism had been introduced, children 
were not baptized on the faith and church-standing of parents, 
but to regenerate the children, to constitute them catechumens 
and auditors — to constitute choirs and candidates for church 
orders and church supporters of the children themselves as 
they advanced in years. And none were rejected for lack of 
faith, or of church-standing of parents, but all that were 
offered were received gladly and baptized. Neither were these 
baptized children withheld from the eucharist, and disgusting 
details of its being administered to them were rife in those 
days. Witness Cyprian's telling of an infant child that ate 
of the bread offered to an idol, and when the eucharist was 
administered, note the result: 

"When the deacon offered, her the cup. the girl by a divine instinct turned 
her head away. The deacon persisted, and put in her mouth some of the 
sacrament of the cup. Then followed retchings and vomitings — the eucharist 
could not stay in her polluted mouth and body." 

Probably exorcism or baptism must precede ; then the child 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 193 

could retain the bread and the wine of the sacrament. Mosheim 
also witnesses : " It appears by many and undoubted testi- 
monies, that the Lord's Supper was looked upon as essential 
to salvation, and therefore was administered to infants." Also 
" the remission of sins was deemed the immediate and happy 
fruit of baptism ; while the bishop, by prayer and the im- 
position of hands, was supposed to confer those sanctifying 
gifts of the Holy Spirit which are necessary to a life of vir- 
tue." This is, perhaps, the only instance we have noted in 
those early days where the three rites, baptism, the eucharist, 
and confirmation (consolumentum) were practised by the same 
persons — i. e., among the Gentiles. 

Touching infant communion, Neander also says : 

" In the North African Church, the practice proves that a belief of a super- 
natural sanctifying power in the outward tokens of the holy supper prevailed, 
hence came the daihj communion ; hence also, with infant baptism, in/ant 
communion. While John vi. 53 was improperly understood of the outward 
participation of the holy supper, it was concluded that no one could attain to 
salvation without the participation in it, just as it had been concluded from a 
misapprehension of John iii. 5 that no one could be saved without baptism/' 

Infant Baptism advances slowly — Confusion of 
Tongues. 

Yet Neander adds, on this point : 

" But although in theory the necessity of infant baptism was allowed, yet it 
was far from being generally prevalent in practice, but, as we suggested, only 
in certain parts of the Church." 

Augustine judged that denying original sin was to abolish 
infant baptism. Query : Has Christ, by giving an indefinite 
law of baptism, laid a just foundation for such conceits, super- 
stitions, and unending vagaries ? Who, at that day, was so 
oracular that he could tell just what Christ's ritual law did 
require? Listen, reader, to the tenfold babel of confusion 
that has ever floated over the earth from many times ten 
thousand voices, " of every age and nation, of every tongue 
and tribe," that speak upon this subject. 

Though Christ did not declare that those dying without baptism were lost, 
13 



194 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

yet the ritualistic fathers "hazarded nothing " (says Robinson, p. 234) "by 
affirming that infants dying without baptism were not saved, for they could not 
be contradicted. And they gained much by the early baptism of such as grew 
up to manhood, for premature prejudices govern mankind more than deliberate 
disinterested reasoning. The gradation, or rather degradation, is curious : the 
belief of the primitive Christians was reason yielding to evidence (this was 
succeeded by orthodox faith). Faith is supplanted by credulity; credulity by 
prepossession; prepossession by a charm; and on this they built a church 
against which, they flattered themselves, the gates of hell should not prevail. 
.... Monks got hold of children to baptize and educate, all the rest of 
Popery followed of course." 

Robinson, p. 406, thus continues : 

" The reduction of the Christian religion to the size of children has been 
the ruin of the credit of Christianity; and the institutes have shared the fate of 
the doctrine — they have been dismounted from their original pedestals, frit- 
tered to puerile playthings; and at length despised and broken, thrown away. 
The river becomes a bath ; the bath a font; the font a basin ; the basin a cup ; 
the cup a cruet, a sponge, or a syringe (for ante-natal baptism) ; and hence, in 
disgust, many threw the whole away (?. e., Judaism was cast out)." 

This was true of those who could not see the magic power 
of rituals ; on the part of these it waned, on the Papal side it 
waxed, as Kobinson has shown, till " faith yielded to credulity ; 
credulity to prepossession ; till superstition more and more 
found a 'charm' in sacraments." 

Robinson continues : 

"It hath happened the same with the Lord's Supper. Remembrance of 
Christ was essential to this as belief was to baptism; but when the sacrament 
was administered to infants, the doctrine being lost, the utensils were reduced. 
Infant communion began with the cup given to boys at Alexandria; it went 
on with a spoon in which a few crumbs of bread were soaked in wine, and put 
into the mouths of the little ones [and that was salvation too]. When little 
infants became communicants, the spoon fell into disuse, and the bread — for 
they sometimes would not swallow it. Then the priest dipped his finger in 
the wine, and moistened the lips of the babe. At length it was wholly omitted." 

So the Reforming Episcopalians (in certain cases) propose 
to omit the water in the consecration of children to-day, and 
may God speed them in their work ! 

On p. 307 Robinson says : 

" Those who embraced the doctrine of the necessity of infant baptism to 
salvation did not foresee where it would end; for, first affirming that baptized 



CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTLZERS. 195 

infants dying in infancy will be saved, and those not baptized neither saved 
nor condemned — neither glorified nor punished, they went on to say that 
infants dying unbaptized were inevitably punished with the torments of ever- 
lasting fire." 

Some of these ritualists held that Old Testament saints 
and the New Testament saints, dying unbaptized, might re- 
ceive a baptism of fire in hades, and afterwards be saved ; 
hence arose the Papal doctrine of purgatory, and the later 
doctrine of an intermediate state between death and the full 
and final heaven. 

Contention about the Baptisteries. 
To return to the original object aimed at in baptizing 
infants (see Hobinson, p. 320) : 

" The Arians and Catholics contended for ages about the baptisteries j finally 
the Catholics gained them — this was taking them from the people-men, and 
giving them to the priest-men. When Christianity spread into the country 
the people met for worship where they could, but all came to the baptismal 
church in the city for baptism. Thus the city bishop became the bishop 
and father of all. [Thus the episcopacy of Popery arose.] The bishop who 
declaimed and published books did very well; but he who intrigued, and 
bribed, and taught, and got possession of a baptistery, was the life of the cause! 
These baptisteries multiplied believers." 

D'Aubigne attests all this a thousand years later. Hear 
him (vol. i. p. 382) : 

" Indulgences were more or less an extraordinary branch of Roman com- 
merce," the sacraments were a staple commodity* The revenue they produced 
was of no small account. To assert that faith was necessary before the sacra- 
ments could confer a real benefit on the soul of the catechumen took away all 
their charm in the eyes of the people. For it is not the Pope that gives faith 
— it is beyond his province — it proceeds from God alone. (The Pope could 
baptize with water.) To declare faith necessary was to deprive Rome both 
of the speculation and the profit" 

Thus substituting the external baptism for that which is 
from God would enable an apostate Church to perpetuate 
and even enlarge itself as long as men are willing to be led 
to their own ruin blindfold, and to accept of a false religion 
in place of the true — thus preparing to eat the fruit of a fatal 

* Luther fought hard against the former, but defended the latter. 



196 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

delusion. In another place, and for later years, Dr. Robin- 
son shows how converts were more swiftly made by baptism, 
a specimen of the labors of Papal missionaries in those days. 
No wonder these Pagan converts to the Papacy were not re- 
formed by their conversion. He says : 

"In the beginning of the seventeenth century, a Jesuit, Lobo, baptized con- 
verts (in Abyssinia), standing in ranks — for there were many. He cried 
aloud: 'Those in this rank are named Anthony; those in that rank are 
named Peter.' And so with the women, 'those in such a rank are named 
Martha.'" 

Thus have hundreds of thousands of Pagans and Mohamme- 
dans been pretendedly baptized unto Christ, after the Papal 
order, who have given no more evidence of conversion to the 
truth, or to the love of God and man and the moral law, 
than they exhibited before baptism or before they had heard 
of Christ. And such are nearly all their converts in Asia 
and Africa. But their object is secured, viz., a nominal ad- 
herence to the Catholic faith. In further allusion to the objects 
to be attained by thus baptizing the non-regenerate and non- 
conscious, Robinson (p. 408) thus replies to Wall's claim that 
all national churches practise infant baptism : 

"Very true, infant baptism, as was intended (not commanded), created 
national churches, and gives them continuance as it gave them being. It was 
for this cause that Dr. Gill called infant baptism the main ground and pillar 
of Popery, and a great number of Baptists are of the same opinion." 

My brother, water-baptism is the ground and pillar of 
Popery. 

What* saves Respect fop* the Bible among Non- 
keligionists. 
Scanning thus the unending conceits and superstitions of 
sacramentarians, the reader will see clearly that were it not 
for the self-evident and eternal principles of the moral law, con- 
tained in both Old and New Testaments, the superstitions and 
absurdities in which many churches are intrenched, upon 
which also many church dynasties are built, with their mani- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 197 

fest bigoted attachment to these superstitions, to the extent, 
oft, of persecuting to the death all that reject and oppose them, 
reflecting and philosophic minds would utterly reject as 
offensive and disgusting not only the sacred records but all 
else that sectarists and sacramentarians hold and teach. Re- 
ligious systems, as they have stood for ages, colonnaded with 
orders, liturgies, formularies, and sacraments, minus the moral 
law with its heavenly precepts and promises, would have be- 
come long since an unendurable " body of death," or at least 
their shadow would have been so utterly dark that no gleam 
of heavenly light could have been seen through the dark 
shrouding curtains of their superstitions and ritual idolatry. 

From the day that Cyprian (a. d. 250) commenced his 
strenuous efforts to open heaven's gates to infants by baptism 
instantly after their birth into the world, and from Augustine's 
persecuting the Donatists to death (see Rob., p. 192) because 
of their departure from his church customs — respecting bap- 
tism especially — the subject has been rendered utterly re- 
proachful and anti-Christian — if aught of human teaching 
respecting the way of salvation and the assumed canonical 
church could be anti-Christian. 

Complications of Baptismal History. 

Even Robinson is compelled to admit (p. 249) that " bap- 
tism is one of the most curious and complicated subjects of 
ecclesiastical history ; " and he well adds, " among men who 
have stepped off the ground of Scripture and laid another 
foundation." He continues his record thus : 

'•'It was variable as the wind, and in every province practised for a different 
reason. At Alexandria, inserted in rules of academic education ; at Jerusalem, 
adaiinistered to promiscuous catechumens [see where the catechumen process 
started] ; in the deserts of Egypt, united to monastical tuition ; in Cappadocia, 
applied as an amulet to entitle the dying to heaven : at Constantinople, accom- 
modated to the intrigues of the court ; in all places given to children extraor- 
dinarily inspired, and in the end, by an African genius (Augustine), affixed to 
the supposed universal depravity of human nature, and so reduced to an ordi- 
nary universal practice. .... 



198 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Baptism the Source and Arm of Ecclesiastical 
Power. 

" Children were so absolutely necessary to ecclesiastics that they were 
obliged to have them at all adventures. With an imperial child, ecclesiastics 
subdued cities ; with noble children, monks built and endowed monasteries ; 
with poor children, as Basil observes, the clergy formed choirs; and in fine, of 
children necessity compelled them to form the whole Catholic Church. . . . How 
essential, then, to their schemes, to fill the world with exclamations of 'Suffer 
little children to come unto me' (to us)! The first European rule of infant 
baptism was made at an irregular meeting of seven obscure men (of a province 
in Spain), without a knowledge of neighboring bishops, in the year 517. They 
were a low, illiterate, mongrel sort of African Jewish Christians. Their Juda- 
ism appears in the above council by its canons, in which they regulated the 
feasts of the Passover and Pentecost, and the keeping of the (Jewish) Sabbath, 
and called the bishop of Carthage pope [i. e., high priest]." So, on p. 311, 
Robinson speaks of " a class of people at Rome, who were of the synagogue, but 
not in the Church, who had a general knowledge of Christianity mixed with 
inveterate customs of Judaism; the true parents of the modern Church of 
Rome, who established their own theology by law, persecuted dissenters, and 
denominated themselves the Church of Rome. . . . By such," he adds, "the 
Aaronical system of religion was lifted into a throne, and erected on the ruins 
of the New Testament, and of the reason and rights of mankind." Now, 
reader, note what follows : "Unconnected as baptism may seem to bexoith all this, 
it teas, hoivever, the chief instrument of acquiring power and producing a revolu- 
tion in favor of pontifical dominion. By this the hierarchy was formed, and 
by this, and not by argument, was chiefly supported." 

How can we avoid emphasizing Robinson's testimony ? 
But hear him again (p. 312) : 

"One of the strongest prejudices of unbelievers against Christianity is that 
the monstrous system of Popery grew out of it. This is, however, a fallacy. 
Had the Church of Rome proceeded from the house of Aquila (see Acts xviii. 
2, 18, 26, etc.) the argument might have had some force, but if it proceeded 
from the unembodied Jews, before mentioned, the prejudice falls to the 
ground." 

Here, surely, is a fearful break in the canonical lineage of 
the Christian (Roman) Church ! It came from non-canoni- 
cally baptized Judaizers, outside the genuine Church ! But 
to quote Robinson : 

"The hierarchy was formed long before Constantine established it; and the 
forty-four city congregations, described by Cyprian sixty years before, were 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 199 

all in union with one high-priest. There were real Christian churches in the 
city with whom they held no communion, and these they persecuted as far as 
they could. Constantine only brought the great faction into public places and 
suppressed the rest. Pope Sylvester dedicated the first edifice to the Roman- 
izing (Judaizing) party, November 9. It was named after Solomon's temple, 
to distinguish it from idol temples. Also, for the same reason, a painting or 
statue of Jesus was placed there ! — probably the true origin of pictures, images, 
and all ecclesiastical idolatry." 

It seems there was no other way to distinguish the temples 
of Christ from the Pagan temples, but by the pictures and 
images of Jesus which they venerated ! 

"A wooden table there was called an altar, and they denominated those who 
officiated there Levites. . . . The same effects which the baptistery had produced 
at Home followed in all other cities, as Venice, Naples, Florence, Pisa, Milan, 
Boulogne, Viterba, Modena, Verona, Ravenna, Aquileia, and many other cities. 
The priest of the congregation that claimed the baptisteries became a prelate; 
the other priests in the city his clergy; some of them were called his 'cardi- 
nal ' priests and deacons, chiefly because they assisted him to administer bap- 
tism. From these sprang suffragans, prebendaries, canons ! chapters, conclaves 
and councils. . . . Cardinals derived their titles from baptismal churches. 
The city fashion of building baptisteries was, as all fashions are, soon imitated 
by country towns, . . . and the bishop of the city baptismal church inspected 
and regulated the affairs of the town churches, and provided them with teachers 
and administrators of ordinances, and generally supplied them with oils and 
ointments from the metropolitan baptistery. The fetching of this chrism at 
Easter! from the ciry baptistery, became in time an evidence to prove the de- 
pendence of these baptisteries on that in the city. The bishop who supplied 
the baptisteries acquired the most parishes. It toas the baptistery, precisely, 
and neither the parsonage house nor the church, which constituted the title to 
the whole. For this reason baptismal churches are called titular churches. All 
these baptisteries were dedicated to John the Baptist (an ante-Christian, Jewish 
priest) and not to Christ." 

Thus we see how Judaic baptism for proselytism and power 
came to prevail in the Christian Church, and like a tidal wave 
in due time flowed over the Roman Church, and that bap- 
tism, and naught else, became the key, soul, and basis of the 
hierarchy, and the real basework of the Papacy. Is it any 
wonder that there should continue to this day a priestly and 
ministerial jealousy for the alleged divine authority of water- 
baptism ? 



200 KITUALISM DETHKONED. 



THE PRISCILLIANISTS, A. D. 400. 

The non-ritualists continued their testimony in Asia, 
eastern Europe and northern Africa, until, in the fourth cen- 
tury, an extra effort was made to possess the religious mind 
in Spain. It is probable that ritualizers from northern Africa 
(Cyprian's diocese), or from Rome, had prepossessed the 
ground, hence here arose the first conflict between these rival 
systems, that ended in the persecution unto death of the 
leading non-ritualists, by a professedly Christian government. 
The Marcionites and followers of Manes had been put to death 
(for heresy or schism), their accusers, evidently, being in part 
Christian, but the ruling powers were Pagan or infidel. But 
this persecution took place after the " cross " had taken the 
throne of the Csesars, which dominated in Spain. 

The record, in brief, is this : One Mark, a native of Mem- 
phis, in Egypt, opposed to the ritualistic tendencies of portions 
of the Church in northern Africa and in Rome, proceeded to 
Spain to preach the faith of Christ in that region. The work 
had proceeded to some lengths, and embraced persons of repu- 
tation for learning and piety, when Priscillian, bishop of 
Avila, a man of honorable birth, and possessed of eminent 
abilities and v fortune, and renowned for his eloquence, became 
a convert to the doctrine. He was soon accused of heresy, 
and with several other bishops, also accused in the same man- 
ner, tried for heresy. He was banished from Spain, but soon 
returning, he was again tried, and with the others acquitted, 
and they werer restored to their sees. 

But, afterward, Priscillian was again brought to trial with 
other of* his associates ; testimony against himself was extorted 
by the radc, and on such testimony Priscillian, with some of 
his adherents, was put to death. He was executed at Treves, 
a. d. 385. This is stated to have been the first execution for 
heresy by any Christian government. 

Respecting the charges against Priscillian, Dr. Williams 
is candid enough to say : 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 201 

* "Whether they were true or not (*. e.) respecting his doctrine, it is more cer- 
tain that he icas cruelly persecuted even unto death for his opinions." 

And Dr. Williams adds, alluding to these martyred 
bishops : 

" Their principal accuser, Ithacius, seems to have been capable of everything 
he charged ou them; he was audacious, talkative, impudent, luxurious, and a 
stave to his belly." 

Such an accuser, pretending to guard the safety and honor 
of the Church by persecuting Christ's self-denying ministers 
to get rid of competition with their self-denying labors, is an 
illustrative example of what many Christian persecutors have 
been in all succeeding ages. 

Martin, the bishop of Tours, nobly stood up against the 
persecution of these men, saying, " it was enough that they 
had been expelled from the churches" (as though this were 
not persecution !) and Martin protested that " it was a new 
and unheard-of evil for a secular judge to interfere in matters 
purely ecclesiastical." These were Christian sentiments, and 
deserve mention as having been uttered by a bishop in the 
case of the trial of his brother bishops before a civil court on 
charge of heresy. It was an unsuccessful resistance to the first 
attempt among Christians to punish heresy (so named) with 
death. 

And let the reader remember that this is one of the earliest 
cases where Protestantism was persecuted by Popery. It is noth- 
ing more nor less than this. Even Mosheim is forced to state 
that the rules of life of these Priscillianists were very severe ! 
And he adds that what their enemies state about their fla- 
gitious practices " rests on no credible testimony." What sort 
of character would the Papists of any age have given to those 
Protestants whom they have persecuted? Which testimony is 
to be received, that of the persecutors, or that of the perse- 
cuted ? Presumptively we mean. They were accused of dis- 
simulation, and it is apparent to any candid thinker that this 
accusation had for its foundation simply the fact that they 
chose to explain their own doctrines rather than to accept the 



202 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

allegations of others. The charge is refuted also by the fact 
that they did acknowledge their objections to the priesthood 
and to the growing structure of the Papacy, until they paid 
the forfeit with their lives. 

It was not for rejecting baptism only (which they did reject), 
but a priesthood also, and a Church they considered not 
according to Christ, that they suffered martyrdom ! 

Glance at the Character of the Priscillianists. 

Again we ask the reader to pass judgment touching this 
matter ; here was a people, devout, pious, earnest, professing 
faith in Christ as a Saviour, preaching repentance and right- 
eousness, preaching the divine unity of Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, and trusting to, and seeking the Holy Ghost as a 
sanctifier. Yet a people that did not receive the orders and 
sacraments of the Papal Church. On the other hand, was this 
same Papal hierarchy, growing in power and influence, jealous 
and eagle-eyed against all rivalry and defection from its 
despotic pretensions, orthodox in doctrinal outline, save that 
it had utterly rejected Christ as Saviour, trusting rather in 
sacraments and church benedictions for this; and rejecting 
Christ as Head of the Church, placing its own behests, laws 
and impositions in the place of Christ, and abjuring free indi- 
vidual inquiry as the law for every servant of Christ, and 
ready to persecute to the death all dissent. Now, which is the 
heretic, the persecutor or the persecuted ? Which has de- 
nied Christ, and substituted its own works for salvation 
through him ? 

Yet turning away from Christ's own test, ""Whosoever doeth 
the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and 
sister, and mother ; " these heresy-hunters, to cover their real 
motives, when they persecute (or perhaps modern heresiolo- 
gists do it for them), make such speculative charges as these: 
Denying the incarnation of God in Christ at his birth ; 
teaching the pre-existence of souls ; teaching the doctrine of 
emanations from God, and the co-existence of Eons ; asserting 






CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 203 

the eternity of matter, or that the material world did not 
originate from God ; declaring the human body a prison of 
the soul until the time of death, and denying the resurrection 
of the flesh ; asserting that the soul of man is a particle of 
the Divine Nature; denying the triune personality of the 
Godhead, etc. 

How many of these charges were made by their cotein- 
porary Christian persecutors, perhaps Irenseus, Tertullian, 
Clement, and Augustine, will inform the reader; while the 
evidence is ample that modern Papal historians (and perhaps 
some Protestant) are fond of rehearsing the same. Yet if 
any one will adduce any evidence that the Papal writers upon 
polemic or dogmatic theology of those days, or upon the 
earth's cosmogony, or upon the divine nature, were any more 
advanced or more " sound " in faith, or clear in statement, or 
made any better use of that portion of theology which they 
did understand, we are ready to receive it. 

We will only suggest that many Jewish conceits were as 
crude and unfounded as those of the Greeks — their supersti- 
tion and love of marvels and "signs" no less a stumbling- 
block to faith — their ritualism and exclusiveness were not 
only annoying, but nauseating to all around them. Nothing 
of this proves them any better or worse Christians, when truly 
converted to Christ. Perhaps the Sadducee became as faith- 
ful a servant of Christ as the Pharisee, after grace had 
wrought its work in his heart. So with the Gnostic and 
Manichean. The only question is, How much did grace reno- 
vate their hearts? not how soon did it correct all their 
philosophical and speculative notions. 

Mosheim forgets all this ; but Neander does not ! Mosheim's 
heretics are, therefore, oft Neander's purest saints — the mani- 
fest tokens of a still existing true Church of Christ. Like 
the followers of Simon Magus and Carpocrates,* some of the 



♦All know that Simon Magus (a Gnostic) was never converted, and who 
can assume that Carpocrates had ever truly renounced his Paganism? 



204 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Gnostics were, doubtless, antinomians, having blotted from 
their minds the moral as well as a ceremonial law. What 
then? There was a Judas among the apostles, and there 
have been too many "Pharisees" as well as "Sadducees" in 
the Papal Church ! The true test must be applied to each 
and to all ! " Every tree is known by its fruits." " Figs 
are not gathered from thorns," nor fruits of righteousness 
from heretics. But the lack of the fruits of righteousness 
proves heresy even in the dominant, persecuting Church. 

Recurring to those charges of speculative error, urged 
agaiust the non-Catholics, we may be permitted to say that 
we have heard men that would not be willing to be called 
either " Pagan " or " infidel," querying respecting the origin 
of matter, whether creation meant formation, or a real in- 
duction into being ; yet was not their love to God and man 
questioned, nor their consistency as Christians impeached for 
this reason ! So theologians of our day write volumes re- 
specting the origin of evil ; the pre-existence of man ; the 
birthplace of Satan ; the eternal procession of the Son of God ; 
the tri-personal nature of Deity ; the parties to, and purport 
of, the covenant of grace — some taking one view of these 
questions, and some another. Yet who thinks of either party 
being disowned as heretics for what they write on these sub- 
jects? Who thinks that either party is the better or the 
worse for their want of knowledge on these questions? As 
to there being good and evil, light and darkness, and a 
dominion or kingdom of each in God's moral universe, and a 
Ruler, a God, or Satan in each, what Pagan, Jew, or Christian 
ever doubted ? Why, then, allude to the crude explanations 
or outlines of these views, found in the ancient writers? Their 
philosophy or conception of the origin or nature of things, 
especially in the spirit world, was not perfect. And are the 
philosophies or conceits of theologians of to-day all perfect, 
rational and harmonious ? Let those who sneer at the dark- 
ness of past ages remember that the darkness is not all past 
yet, and ere they excommunicate all unwisdom, heed well the 



CHRO]STCLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 205 

inquiry, " Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thy- 
self?" Want of knowledge, simply, is the source of these 
multifarious speculations. If ignorance be sin, then probably 
they are all sinners that write on such subjects ; or, if it be 
deemed sin that all do not coincide with Mosheim, we presume 
the dissentients will be willing to refer the matter to another 
tribunal than his. Yet upon such abstruse, impenetrable, 
and impracticable matters are the philippics of Tertullian, 
Irenseus, and Clement against heretics largely composed. 
So caustic is their language oft, {"basilisks" "serpents" 
"vipers," are not unusual terms applied by Tertullian to 
those he is criticising,) and so obscure their points, that the 
critical reader is justly at a loss to know which is the heretic 
— the one arraigned, or the one sitting as judge ! 

Which will the Reader choose? 

As to embodied and enduring heresy, which will the Chris- 
tian reader choose, Augustine's Papal retinue (a fatal re- 
tinue) of 1400 years of the reign of the doctrine of baptismal 
regeneration, as witnessed in the Papacy in all these centuries, 
only compensated by certain abstract doctrines of eternal 
decrees and a limited atonement, and but a few marked saints 
among them in all these ages ; or will he choose the Protes- 
tant dissenters from Rome, in all these centuries, with all 
their mental freedom and spiritual illumination, and enthrone- 
ment of Christ as Saviour, without a ritual law, and with 
persecutions to the death? Which will he choose to deem 
Christ's peculiar people? Which have so partaken of Christ's 
" baptism," that he "is not ashamed to call them brethren"? 

Again, the statement so oft and so wantonly made by 
Mosheim, that dissenting sects reject the Old Testament, thus 
evincing their heresy, calls for a faithful rebuke of the histo- 
rian for its general lack of candor and unquestionable exag- 
geration. Neander seldom makes such a charge, or attempts 
to sustain such historians as Mosheim, who have evidently 
drawn too largely from Catholic sources in their inquiries. 



206 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

As to the charge itself, be it said that Church historians can 
point to sects, too numerous to mention, that recognize the 
Mosaic dispensation as having passed away, and, with Paul, 
believe that " the law was our schoolmaster (footman) to lead 
us to Christ, but after that faith is come we are no longer 
under a schoolmaster." 

The whole Baptist Church so believes to-day. And the 
Pedo-Baptist Church, in a very undefined and inconsistent 
form, professes so to believe. And so does every Protestant 
sect, in terms, teach the same doctrine. Yet neither did those 
aucient nor do these modern sects doubt that the prophecies 
of the Old Testament point to Christ — likewise its sacrifices 
aud oblations, and, in general, its ritual and its laws. Save a 
few, these all (the ancient and the modern) have believed 
that God was the Teacher and Supreme Lawgiver of the 
Jews ; the Inspirer of their prophets ; their Guide to the land 
of promise ; their great Deliverer from peril oft ; and the 
High God was their Saviour. But all Christians have been 
supposed to hold that we live under the covenant of faith, 
and not under the law. Why, then, this undiscriminating 
impeachment of so many millions, most truly Christian, for 
accepting of Christ rather than Moses as their Teacher and 
Saviour ? 

Our Protest against Anathematizing the Kighteous. 

We protest, in behalf of our common heritage in the Word 
of Inspiration, and in behalf of the freedom of the Church of 
Christ from bondage to a collapsed economy, and its " carnal 
ordinances" and ritual law — those " beggarly elements" which 
only bound the Jews to a temporary and fleeting heritage — 
against imputing heresy to men who have believed that dis- 
pensations may change, or pass away; leaving still "the 
foundation of God standing sure, having this seal, The Lord 
knoweth them that are his," and those "naming Christ's 
name carefully departing from iniquity." 

We think it becoming Church historians, who wear churchly 



CHKONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEKS. 207 

robes fitted very closely, to beware how they defame the 
"martyrs of Jesus" all along the ages, who, without any 
external baptism, were first baptized with the Holy Ghost, 
and then took angels' wings at their " baptism of blood," and 
were conveyed home to heaven, as being any less Christian, 
or any less Christ's chosen witnesses than those who have not 
" drank of Christ's cup, and have not been baptized with the 
baptism that he was baptized with." These martyrs have 
worshipped at a holier fane, and sought and found a purer 
shrine than any that Moses or the Jewish priests £ver built. 

" The Temple once which brightly shone 
On proud Moriah's rocky brow, 
Not there doth God erect his throne, 
And build his shrine for worship now. 

" The sunbeam of the orient day 

Saw naught on earth more bright and fair; 
But desolation swept away, 

And left no form of glory there. 

" But God who reared that chisel'd stone 
Noic builds upon a higher plan, 
And rears the columns of his throne — 
His temple in the heart of man. 

" man ! woman ! know it well, 

Nor seek elsewhere his place to find; 
That God doth in his temple dwell — 
The temple of the holy mind." — UphAM. 

THE EUCHITES, OB PHAYING ONES, A. D. 400-600. 

To the latter part of the third century, and early part of 
the fourth, is attributed the rise of this most interesting class 
of pietists and non-ritualists, albeit Mosheim asserts that they 
were known (by other names, perhaps) in Syria, Egypt, and 
other Eastern countries, even before the Christian era. In 
this statement he evidently refers to Philo, the Essenes, and 
other pious Jews, and converts to the same mystic form of piety. 
Be it so or not, their trace is dim or lost in the main, after the 
advent of Christ, until we reach the period named at the 



208 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

head of this record, when the Euchites come into full view as 
an earnest, consecrated, self-denying Christian people. 

Milner's " History of all Denominations " and Mosheim 
speak of their continuing, under different titles, as Messalians 
and Bogomiles, until the twelfth century. It is certain that 
these latter were also non-ritualists, and manifested the same 
spirit and zeal for Christ as did the early Euchites. 

The Euchites held that deliverance from sin could not be 
brought about by anything outward ; hence they treated with 
contempt the sacraments, and the special means of grace 
which they proposed, as that by which all spiritual good was 
obtained, was prayer ! hence they gained the appellation of 

the PRAYING ONES. 

Milner asserts that the name Euchite " became a common 
name for persons of eminent piety and zeal for genuine 
Christianity as opposed to the vicious practices and insolent 
tyrannies of the priesthood ! " And it is notable that such 
was the state of the popular Church and society, the priest- 
hood, and the laity, that those in the early centuries, among 
the Gentiles, who would live "godly in Christ Jesus," oft re- 
sorted to the monastic life, as the most favorable to their aim, 
both as it respected communion with God and freedom from 
the persecutions of men ! Conceding the rights of conscience 
and tolerating diversities of religious sentiment, has been a 
plant of very slow growth in our poor sin-cursed and bigotry- 
cursed world. If any would censure the monastic and ascetic 
tendencies of those ages, they should first consider the temp- 
tations and trials to which they were exposed from without 
(practically unknown now) ; also how potent the influences of 
the customs of a dissolute society, and the -spirit thereby en- 
gendered, requiring a mighty internal struggle oft, to break 
away and stand for life, clear of their fascinating and corrupt- 
ing influence. These ascetics were manifestly determined to 
stand clear of all these, and preach Christ until death, look- 
ing for their reward in the glory to which Christ, their head, 
had gone, and not here, and they "were willing to count all on 






CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 209 

earth as loss to win that crown, and share in that reward 
which Christ had gained, and which he, through the same life 
of self-denial and suffering, was inviting them. We who en- 
joy the Christian freedom of to-day do not approve their 
course because of its ultimate result upon monastic society as 
a whole, and its constant reflex influence on those thus 
secluded from contact with the varying phases of human 
society, which society they should live to re-form and mould 
after the "mind of Christ;" but little do we realize the 
obstacles in their way, when even a corrupt popular Church 
was their foe and their greatest persecutor. Seldom did even 
the prophets among the Jews have such opposition, to such an 
extent and so constantly, at least. There is some apology for 
Christians taking the wings of a "great eagle and flying into 
the wilderness" of retirement from the "face of the dragon," 
and choosing solitude rather than domestic responsibilities, 
when espionage, proscription, imprisonment, in such prisons 
as were common in those days, banishment, confiscation, and 
often death, was the penalty of diverging from the Church, 
whicli united "Church and State" held the keys of life and 
death, to woo or awe into fealty all religionists by the usurped 
authority they conjointly exercised. 

The Apostle Paul, even, dissuaded from family responsi- 
bilities in the then " present distress," for it was neither 
prudent nor seemly for a Christian to talk of feasts when the 
enemy was devouring his substance ; nor to count himself at 
home when his house was on fire, or when (about to be) ban- 
ished to a strange land, or to seek to provide for, and bless a 
family, when his own life was in "jeopardy every hour." 
And this "jeopardy" was as great under the pressure of 
Papal persecutions, as before under those of infidel Jerusalem 
or Pagan Greece or Pome. And the " present distress " of 
Paul continued as to the dissenters from the ritualistic 
(Roman) Church through all those ages until within a cen- 
tury of this date (1874). Not only the Catharists, Waldenses, 
and Albigenses, of Continental Europe, have known the 
14 



210 EITUALISM DETHRONED;' 

power of this " dragon " of persecution at the hands of the 
Papacy, but the dissenters from the "State Church" of 
England, two hundred and fifty years since, felt the weight of 
the motive, either to be "hermits" (eremites), and silent at 
their own homes, or to " take wings and flee into the wilder- 
ness," which latter thousands of them did ; while thousands 
of others, bishops, i. e., ministers, and people, " had trial of 
cruel imprisonment," ministers (two thousand of them) driven 
from their parishes, and Christian worshippers in their chosen 
assemblies arrested, branded, fined, imprisoned, or banished, 
and some even punished with death. But this is a diversion. 
We only allude to these facts of history to show that we are 
not competent to say, at this late day, how many of those who 
chose the life of the anchoret, or followed Christ and Paul in 
celibacy and the chastening of the flesh, had reasons for it 
that would, in the circumstances, satisfy our own minds of its 
propriety. 

Not that we would be understood as asserting that the 
Euchites were all anchorets : far from it, they were for ages 
and centuries a flourishing society, sustaining among them- 
selves all the relations and vocations of life. But there was a 
strong tendency in the most fervent and pious among them to 
this mode of life, as, indeed, was true of all Christendom at this 
era. And be it known that even Basil, the Great, as all our 
modern writers and Church historians call him now, and for 
1500 years counted the great pillar and light of the Church 
of that age, was the special organizer and champion of the 
monastic and recluse life. For once, we will quote in full 
from the Religious Encyclopedia the article referring to this 
man : 

"Basil, called the Great, to distinguish him from other Greek patriarchs of 
the same name, was born in 329, at Caesarea, in Cappadocia, and after having 
studied at Athens, he for a while taught rhetoric and practised at the bar. In 
370 he was made bishop of Caesarea, where he died in 379. He was the most 
distinguished ecclesiastic among the Greek patriarchs. His efforts for the 
regulation of clerical discipline of the divine service, and of the standing of 
the clergy; the number of his sermons; the success of his mild treatment of 
t-ke Arians; and, above all, his endeavors for the promotion of the monastic 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 211 

life, for which he prepared vows and rules, observed by himself, and still re- 
maining in force, prove the extent of his influence. The Greek Church honors 
him as one of its most illustrious patron saints, and celebrates his festival, 
January 1. His followers are widely extended; there are even some in 
America. They lead an austere life. The vows of obedience, chastity, and 
poverty, framed by Basil, are the rules of all the orders of Christendom, 
although he is particularly the father of the Eastern, as Benedict is the father 
of the Western order. In point of genius, controversial skill, and a rich and 
flowing eloquence, Basil was surpassed by very few of the fourth century."* 

Of one thing we may be sure : they did not refrain from 
preaching Christ ; they went among men so far as to preach 
Christ to them ; they did it faithfully ; seconded by their own 
example of self-denial, they loved and endured all things, even 
for those who hunted and hated them. They had naught else 
to live for, and for Christ and his cause they did live, and for 
that cause they laid down their lives ! 

The Euchites lived secluded from a lucre-loving world, and, 
as we said, derived their name from their incessant prayers, 
with song, " for they believed," says the historian, " that the 
evil spirit in man can only be expelled by continual praying 
and singing, . . . and that this demon being once expelled, 
the soul will return to God pure." 

* Henderson says that " Basil, having retired into a desert, founded a mon- 
astery, and having drawn up several hundred rules, his society spread all over 
the East, and soon into the West. Some say that Basil saw himself the spir- 
itual father of more than ninety thousand monks in the East only. The his- 
torians of this order say that it has produced 14 popes, 1805 bishops, 3010 
abbots, and 11,085 martyrs, besides an infinite number of confessors and 
virgins. It also boasts of several emperors, kings, and princes who have em- 
braced its rule. Thus we see that aionasticism was early honored in the high- 
est places of the popular Church. Nevertheless it has full oft furnished the 
only safe retreat, the nest in the covert where has been hatched the earliest and 
the latest protests of Christian freedom and righteousness against priestcraft 
and a perverted Church authority, from the days of Basil and the Euchites to 
the days of Martin Luther. It corrupted the canonical Roman Church far 
more than either the Greek or the dissenters. It resulted in binding the yoke 
of celibacy on the Roman priesthood to this day, which was never only in part 
true of the Greek Church, or among any of the protesting sects. At length 
the Roman Church became wholly the pervert on this subject, while the dis- 
senters wholly threw out the evil leaven." 



212 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

" This sect," Mosheim says, "drew over many to its ranks by its show of 
piety, and the Greeks waged war with it through all the subsequent centuries." 
He adds in another place, " It should be remembered that the terms Euchites 
and Messalians were used with great latitude among the Greeks and the Ori- 
entals, and were applied to all who endeavored to raise the soul to God by re- 
calling it from all influence of the senses, though these persons oft differed 
very materially in their religious opinions." The chief charge against them, 
at a later day, was, "that they resisted the outrageous domination of the 
priesthood, and derided the monstrous mass of superstition which was sanc- 
tioned by public authority." And all who did this the Greeks (the potentates) 
" were accustomed to designate by the odious names of Messalians ! or Euchites ! 
just as the Latins at a later day denominated all the opposers of the Roman 
pontiffs as Waldenses or Albigenses." 

Among this class of praying pietists, the Bogomiles origi- 
nated at a later day, whose founder, one Basil, a monk, was 
burned alive at Constantinople. 

"So many instances of men of this description occur," says 
the historian, " both in ancient and later times, that it is not 
strange that such men (of such sentiments) are found in the 
East [see "Spiritual Christians of Russia"] at this era. The 
name of the sect, Bogomiles, was derived from the divine 
mercy which they are said to have incessantly implored, thus 
showing that they were only a branch of the Euchites or 
praying ones" 

The testimony of Mosheim, that these praying peoples 
" endeavored to raise the soul to God, by calling it from the 
influence of the senses," is good testimony as to their moral 
and spiritual elevation, and the purity and sanctity of their 
lives, since Mosheim is so unwilling to bear such testimony to 
the character of the non-ritualistic dissenters. Yet even 
Mosheim will find very few of the dissenters of any of the 
ages that were not non-ritualists (a fact that historians have 
culpably ignored), since few that rejected the priesthood of 
Rome established a priestly caste among themselves, and, 
therefore, had none to consecrate the elements of a sacrament. 
An attempt at such consecration with "common" or unpriestly 
hands would soon render the ceremony contemptible in the 
eyes of all sedate, reflecting, and spiritual-minded persons. 






CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 213 

And no true Christian philosopher, recognizing the great 
central truth that love to God and man is alone the true reli- 
gion, and the ultimate test of all theology, will fail to recog- 
nize the claims of every society, sect, school and brotherhood, 
that affords the decisive evidence of being God's accepted and 
elect ones, in that they bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. 
Nor can such sustaiu the claims, or write in honor of the 
popular forms of Christianity as embodied in the huge ritual- 
istic dynasties and stale corporations of the past. Nor do 
they trace the true spirit of Christianity in the narrow grooves 
of any current ritualism, or mere scholastic and sectarian 
creed. Hallam's "Middle Ages" and Milman's "Latin 
Christianity," for example, deal damaging blows against the 
churchly claims of those ages, and they do not set in any en- 
viable light either the scholastic teachings or the cringing 
servitude to narrow dogmas which they found so common even 
in the higher ranks of the clergy. 

Reading their keen analysis, and bold exposure of the sys- 
tems (or nutshells!) of these scholastic divines, one is led to 
ask himself, Can there not be true fealty to Christ and jealous 
regard for sanctifying truth, without crucifying charity within 
ourselves and narrowing our horizon to some little parish cir- 
cuit or denominational fold, and dwarfing our souls to take in 
only the interests of a party no worthier nor more sacred in 
God's sight than a thousand others that have been and are 
to-day ? Was it so with Christ and Paul? These Christian 
philosophers (Hallam and Milman), underneath all these 
rituals and systems, find an interior basis, or a spiritual 
church — crossing all surface distinctions and superficial boun- 
dary lines, in a manifestly received love of God, common to 
them all. And they have found God dishonored most by 
those who have exhibited the most marked churchly tenden- 
cies and who most strenuously observed the ritualistic lines. 
No reader of the religious history of these ages can deny this. 



214 KITUALISM DETHRONED. 

THE PAULICIANS, A. D. 600-900. 

We now reach the era of the Paulicians, a protesting and 
non-ritualistic sect that arose in Armenia, western Asia, in 
the time of Constans, and were most prevalent and active in 
the seventh and eighth centuries ; some affirm that they arose 
through the instrumental labors of two eminent religious 
teachers named Paul and John. Others, with more reason, 
perhaps, affirm that they were so called from their constant 
aim to copy the spirit and teachings of the Apostle Paul. 
Neander, vol. iii. p. 263, thus introduces them : 

"They were for restoring the life and manners of the Church to apostolic 
simplicity; they maintained that by the multiplication of external rites and 
ceremonies in the dominant Church the true life of religion had declined. 
They combated an inclination to rely on the magic effects of external forms, 
particularly the sacraments. Indeed they went so far on this side as to wholly 
reject the outward celebration of the sacraments; they maintained that it was 
by no means Christ's intention to institute the baptism by water as a perpetual 
ordinance, but that by baptism he meant only the baptism of the Spirit, for 
by his teachings he communicated himself as the Living Water for the thorough 
cleansing of the entire human nature. So in respect to the supper: They held 
that the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ consisted 
simply in the coming into vital union with him through his doctrines, his 
word, which were his true flesh and blood. It was not sensible bread and 
sensible wine, but his words, which were to be the same for the soul that bread 
and wine are for the body, which he designated as his flesh and his blood." 

The Paulicians flourished from the year A. d. 600 to 900. 
How they were treated by the Judaizing and Romanizing 
popular Church may be seen by taking some illustrative ex- 
amples. Neander, vol. iii. p. 588 : 

"It may be conjectured," says Neander, "that Bishop Jacob was one of 
those men who, by the study of the sacred Scriptures and of the older church 
teachers (he himself living in Armenia, where Christianity was exceedingly 
corrupted by superstition and a host of ceremonial observances growing out 
of the mixture of Christian and Jewish elements), had caught the spirit of 
reform, — a conjecture corroborated by the fact that two synods were unable to 
convict him of any heresy. If he was actually connected with the Paulicians, 
it was assuredly with those of the better stamp ; with those who, in their efforts 
to bring about a restoration of apostolic simplicity, and in their opposition to 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 215 

the intermixture of Judaism and Christianity, represented the spirit of Marcion. 
His opponents themselves acknowledge that he was distinguished for his aus- 
terity of life; and his priests, who travelled through the land as preachers of 
repentance, were men of the same simple and abstemious habits. 'His own 
act alone,' said they, ' can help the individual who has sinned,' i. e., without inter- 
vention of priests. He (Jacob) met with great success among the clergy, the 
people and the nobles, until finally the Catholicus, or spiritual chief of the 
Armenian Church, craftily succeeded in getting possession of his person. He 
first caused him to be branded icith the heretical mark, and then to be carried 
from place to place with a common crier, to proclaim him a heretic and expose 
him to public scorn. After this he was thrown into a dungeon, from which he 
managed to effect his escape, but was finally killed by his enemies," 

Sylvanus Constantine, to whom some attribute the 
honor of founding the sect of the Paulicians, but who more 
properly may be said to have given new vitality and energy 
to it — by himself and the younger ministers he sent out — . 
founded many churches of the Paulicians in the seventh cen- 
tury. He gained his religious views by reading attentively 
the New Testament (which was very rare in those days), and 
especially the writings of the Apostle Paul. He sought to 
reach the very spirit and teachings of primitive Christianity, 
Says Gibbon : " Whatever might be the success, a Protestant 
reader will admire the spirit of the inquiry." " Christianity 
in its primitive simplicity and power," says Jones (" History 
of Christian Church "), " was by such teachers widely diffused 
through Armenia, Pontus and Cappadocia. . . . Constan- 
tine was, however, seized at Colonia by the arm of persecution. 
By a refinement of cruelty he was placed before a line of his 
disciples, who were commanded, as the price of their own 
pardon and the proof of their repentance, to massacre their 
spiritual father. They turned aside from the impious office, 
the stones dropped from their filial hands, and of the whole 
number only one man, named Justus, could be found base 
enough to become his executioner. Thus after twenty-seven 
years of evangelical labor this venerable leader of the Pauli- 
cian churches fell a martyr to the truth of the gospel." 

" Thus the Paulicians and other kindred sects," says Nean- 
der, " though occasionally suppressed, continually sprung up 



216 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

anew in Armenia, till the middle of the eleventh century, and 
from this point they spread abroad to other regions, particu- 
larly the adjacent provinces of the Roman empire, partly to 
escape the violence of persecution and partly from the desire 
to multiply converts to their doctrines." 

" Their first migration was to Italy, whence, in process of* 
time, they sent colonies into almost all the other provinces of 
Europe and formed a considerable number of religious assem- 
blies, who adhered to their doctrine and who were afterwards 
persecuted with the utmost vehemence by the Roman pontiffs. 
In Italy they were called Paterini, or Gazari, from Gazaria, 
in Lesser Tartary, where their predecessors had been supposed 
to originate. In France they were called Albigenses." (See 
"Religious Encyclopedia") Even Mosheim has treated the 
Paulicians with great candor. He says: 

"The Paulicians recommended to the people the most ardent zeal and con- 
stant and assiduous perusal of the Scriptures, and expressed the utmost indig- 
nation against the Greeks, who allowed to priests alone access to these sacred 
fountains of divine knowledge; and they refused baptism and the supper, af- 
firming, of the supper, that Christ's last supper was only 'those divine dis- 
courses and exhortations which are spiritual food and nourishment to tne 
soul, and fill it with repose, satisfaction and delight.' They refused to venerate 
the wood of the cross, or to worship the Virgin Mary, or to admit the sanc:ity 
of churches more than of private houses; disapproved of incense and a coise- 
crated oil for absolution ; denied that there were ranks and orders in the min- 
istry ; rejected the Papal burial service, with fees attached, also the sacraments 
of penance, the, mass, the doctrine of purgatory, and the adoration of saints 
and images." 

Now will the Christian reader judge which were the heretics 
in God's sight— these pure and noble people, suffering all man- 
ner of persecution, or those who persecuted them ? In all 
these ages, the dissenters from the Papacy who rejected water 
baptism were more numerous by far than dissenters who re- 
tained it. And in later ages, nearly all the Mystics and other 
dissenters, who believed in Christian holiness and a true spir- 
itual life, like these Paulicians, were anti-baptizers ; they had 
no priesthood, or canonical administrators, or church to bap- 
tize them. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 217 

THE ORLEANISTS (IN FRANCE). 

We next reach the period of the Orkanists, who arose 
about the year a. d. 1000, undoubtedly a continuation of the 
Paulicians in their Western field. Neander, vol. iii. p. 595, 
says of these : 

'• They rejected also the sacrament of baptism with water, probably explain- 
ing it as the baptism of John. . . . But they substituted in its place a 
baprism of the Holy Spirit, which was to be connected with the imposition 
of hands (as in the apostolic days), as the symbol of initiation to their sect. 
And this again evidences their relationship to Oriental sects and to the later 
Catharists. This rite (imposition of hands) was certainty the same thing with 
what was designated among these sects by the term consolamentum (form of 
communication of the Comforter, the Paraclete). By virtue of this imposition 
of hands, whoever submitted to it in a suitable frame of mind would be filled 
with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and purified from all sin. . . . With a 
spiritual baptism they held also to a spiritual eucharist, by which those who 
received this baptism would be refreshed and find all their spiritual needs com- 
pletely satisfied. Whoever had ever once tasted of this heavenly food, said they, 
would abide steadfastly in the truth and resist all temptations to apostasy." 

Here, then, we find a spiritual-minded people closely re- 
sembling the most spiritual and Christlike of the Protestant 
denominations of to-day — specially those that inculcate the 
doctrine of personal sanctification and Christian holiness upon 
their members, as George Fox, John Wesley, C. G. Finney, 
etc. But " those that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall 
suffer persecution." And these exemplary Orleanists by no 
means escaped it. Says Neander, p. 596 : 

"In the year 1022 the king himself (Robert of France) came to Orleans, 
where a numerous synod had assembled, to try and pass sentence upon the sect. 
Fallen upon during one of their secret meetings, of which information had 
been given by Arsfast, all who were found present were arrested, together with 
Arefast himself, and conveyed in chains before the spiritual tribunal, where 
also the king and queen assisted. When Arefast presented before them the 
doctrines they had taught him, they no longer hesitated to avow openly their 
adherence of them, but declared : 

"'Think not that this sect, because ye have so lately come to the 
knowledge of it, has sprung up within a short period. For a long time 
we have professed these doctrines, and we expected that these doctrines 



218 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

would one day be admitted by you and by all others ; this we believe 
still. We have a higher law, one written by the Holy Spirit in the 
inner man : we can believe nothing but that which God, the Creator of 
all things, has revealed to us ! Do with us as you please. Already 
we behold our King reigning in heaven, whose right hand shall exalt 
us to an eternal triumph, and crown us with celestial joys.' " 

All except one ecclesiastic and one man who recanted were 
condemned to the stake and died there ! 

Barclay, in his treatise on Sacraments, quotes from several 
authors, as Alan us, Pitticus, and Floracensis, corroborating 
the record of the martyrdom of these Orleanists, who denied 
water-baptism. Alames also speaks of these that were burnt 
for denying it, for they said, " That baptism had no efficacy 
either in respect to children or adult persons ; and therefore 
men were not obliged to take baptism ;." and ten canonics 
(ministers) were burnt for that crime. 

Floracensis, a Papal monk, has given this record : 

" I will give you to understand concerning the heresy that was in the city of 
Orleans, for it was true that King Robert caused to be burnt alive near four- 
teen of that city, of the chief of their clergy, and the more noble of their laics, 
who were hateful to God, and abominable to heaven and earth; for they did 
stiffly deny the grace of holy baptism, and also the consecration of the Lord's 
body and blood." 

Thus their whole heresy consisted in denying the validity 
of sacraments. 

Neander infers that the influence of this sect was widely 
felt among the monks and ecclesiastics from a letter of Fil- 
bert, a bishop, to the abbot Adeodat, where he "inveighs 
against the corrupt tendency of those carnally-minded men, 
who represented the sacraments as toys, holding it to be im- 
possible that outward and earthly ordinances could produce any 
such effects as are ascribed to them^ 

Thus those who refused to trust in rituals were, by the 
church bishops, pronounced " carnally-minded " as well as 
heretics ! 

They surely had the mark of God's people in suffering 
calumny and various kinds of persecution and bodily torture. 






CHEOXICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEBS. 219 



On p. 597, vol. in., Neander gives us the following ac- 
count of another " peculiar people: " 

" Some years later, a people were found in Arras and Liege called Arranians, 
who were for removing out of the way everything which could serve as a sub- 
stitute for one's own moral efforts, or as an excuse for moral inactivity. ' Each 
man,' said they, ' must be holy by his own act, and within himself — by that 
alone, and not by any magical operation of sacraments can man become pure. 
Outward baptism and the outward eucharist are nothing.' To show the ineffi- 
ciency of baptism they pointed to the immoral lives of the persons baptized, 
and to the fact that in the children on whom baptism was performed, not one 
of the conditions was to be found upon which such efficacy must depend; no 
consciousness, no will, no faith, no confession. The doctrines which they re- 
ceived agreed in all respects, as they affirmed, with the doctrines of Christ and 
of the apostles. It consisted in this, to forsake the world, to overcome the 
fle^h, to support one's self by the labor of one's own hands, to injure no one, 
to show love to all the brethren; and 'Whosoever practised these needed no 
baptism — where it failed, baptism would not supply its place/ They were 
opposed, like the Paulicians, to the worship of the cross and of images; they 
spoke against the priestly consecration, the value of the consecrated altar, and 
of a consecrated church. ' The church,' said they, 'is nothing but a pile of 
stones heaped together; ' the church has no advantages whatever, over any 
place where the Divine Being is worshipped." 

They were simply true Christian Protestants. But Neander 
adds: 

" They were accused of heresy ; a synod was convened at Arras to try them — 
the archbishop addressed to them a discourse in refutation of their tenets, 
[how refute them ?] and in defence of the Catholic faith. But they explained, 
and were not convicted, but preached their tenets more cautiously thereafter. 

" But Ramihed, probably of a similar faith, was also brought before the arch- 
bishop — but he testified his orthodoxy on every point, so that no advantage 
was gained over him. A synod was afterward convened to try him, and here 
again testifying his orthodoxy on every point, the archbishop simply required 
of him that he should receive the holy eucharist in testimony of his innocence. 
To this, however, he refused to consent, declaring that he could not take the 
eucharist, neither from the hand of abbot, of priest, nor of the archbishop him- 
self, because they were all guilty of simony and of covetousness, under some 
form or other. This sufficed to arouse against him the indignation of the 
clergy, who at once declared him a heretic." 



220 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Now what does the reader think of Neander's remarking 
upon this judgment of that synod : 

" It is clear that a process of this kind furnishes no ground for a certain 
judgment respecting the doctrines of this person." 

Does it not furnish ground for a judgment that the court 
that tried him was itself guilty of heresy and apostasy from 
Christ? But with rather cool charity, where it should be 
warm, Neander adds : 

" Perhaps Ave may find in this case the indication of a spontaneous move- 
ment of the Christian consciousness, and of a pure interest for Christian piety 
against the corruption of the clergy." 

We may add, do we not see in these events as clear a need 
of purifying the clergy, as when Luther attempted that work 
400 years later ? However, 

" This man was hunted down as a heretic by the fanatical vengeance of the 
populace; when seized, he followed his pursuers Avithout fear. He was con- 
fined in a cabin, and while prostrated on the ground in prayer a torch was ap- 
plied to the building, and he was consumed in the flames." 

Thus another martyr gained the crown, and the signet of 
the Almighty upon his blameless and consecrated life. Nean- 
der adds : 

"But as he had gained many followers by the purity of his life, so the en- 
thusiasm of his followers was only increased by the mode of his death. His 
folloAvers continued to multiply in the towns of this district until the twelfth 
century; especially among the weavers, which, from its peculiar character, 
has ever been the favorite resort of the mystical sects." 

So we discover that the Mystics also were anti-ritualists, the 
flower and glory of the true Church in the days of the dark 
eclipse of the faith in the Papal Church. Neander's seem- 
ingly tacit admission that the Arranians, and Ramihed, a 
spiritual prince among them, really held errors of doctrine 
(albeit he does not name one that was evolved on trial, yet 
the trial was for life or death for that very purpose), and 
Ramihed was persecuted to death, only because he refused to 
accept a sacrament at the hands of a simoniacal and ritualistic 
clergy, is not ingenuous. It shows that he himself was still 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 221 

possessed of a false idea of ritualistic sanctity and church au- 
thority ! He fully attests the purity of life of the Arranians 
and their zeal for a purer church ; in other words, that they 
were the genuine reformers of that period ; and that in defence 
of such principles of reform and in active obedience to the 
desire for reform they were hunted to the death ! By such 
only casual manifestations of the obscurity of his own percep- 
tions, does Meander evince his ritualistic bias after the Lu- 
theran type. 

THE GEHHABDITES, A. D. 1040. 

But to continue our anti-ritualistic record : 

"From the year A. d. 1027 to 1046," says Neander, "there appeared in 
Turin a sect, with Gerhard at their head, who discoursed thus: 'We have a 
priest, not that Roman one, but another, who daily visits our brethren, scat- 
tered through the world; and when God bestowed him on them, they received 
from him, with great devoutness, the forgiveness of sins. Besides this priest, 
who is without the tonsure, they know of no other, nor did they acknowledge 
any other sacrament than his absolution.' Thus," says Neander, "we find in 
this sect., as in that at Orleans, the consciousness of a fellowship extending 
through different countries. By their priest, they doubtless meant the Holy 
Spirit, which formed the invisible bond of fellowship, and bestowed on them 
the inward clearing from remaining sin, and the inward consecration of the 
divine life. This inward working of the Divine Spirit stood to them in the place 
of all sacraments. The sufferings to which they were exposed on account of 
their doctrines they encountered cheerfully, considering them the means of ex- 
piating sins, before and in the present life, and thus preparing them to return 
purified to the society of the higher world of spirits. Those, therefore, who 
were deprived of the privilege of dying as martyrs, died cheerfully under 
self-inflicted tortures." 

Here was a tincture of ancient Jewish and our modern 
Edward Beech er doctrine of pre-existence, with a not un- 
common Christian hungering for martyrdom ; but nothing 
that stains the spotlessness of their character, unless it be 
their self-martyrdom in certain cases. 

" The archbishop of Milan sent soldiers and arrested a number of these; they 
were led to the stake, and the choice given them either to bow before a cross 
erected on the spot, and confess the Catholic faith, or to die. Some chose to 
do the former, but the majority, placing their hands upon their faces, plunged 
into the flames." 



222 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Another proof of their heresy, is it not f 

On p. 604, Neander gives an account of the part Bishop 
Gebuin acted in the destruction of Gerhardt. He hints that 
Gebuin, in order to cover his own deed, intimated that Ger- 
hardt became a maniac and leaped into a well and perished 
there. 

" There are many things in this story," says Neander, " calculated to excite 
doubt. ... It is possible that in this case we have a perverted, spiteful rep- 
resentation of facts, and that his death was really brought about by the 
fanatical hatred of heretics, and was represented by his enemies as an act 
of vuieide." 

Alluding to such reformers, Neander aptly remarks, vol. 
iii. p. 602: 

" Not only was there an anti-ritualistic impulse felt in Europe, through sects 
originating in the East at this era, but we find such (heretical) tendencies 
traceable to other quarters. The revived study of the ancient Latin authors 
in the ninth to eleventh century called forth in many an antagonism of the 
cultivated understanding to the dominant Church doctrine, and engendered 
many opinions which were regarded as heretical." 

Some of these taught that the moral among the heathen 
were predestinated to salvation if they had never heard the 
gospel ; and that they were saved without the intervention of 
the Papal Church priesthood. " And Glaberius Rudolph 
testifies that the predilection for Paganism (for the salvation 
of men outside the Church we presume) had given birth at 
the same time to similar heretical tendencies throughout 
Italy and in Sardinia ; and he informs us that the individuals 
accused of these tendencies were, some of them, beheaded, 
while others died at the stake." 

"It is quite possible," continues Neander, "that this writer had not clearly 
discriminated the heretical appearances, and that we must suppose such to be 
here meant as had proceeded from the Oriental (t. e., the anti-ritualistic) in- 
fluence. When he says that persons from Sardinia spread these false doctrines 
in Spain, we must assuredly believe that Oriental rather than Pagan doctrines 
were meant; for how is it possible to suppose that Pagan doctrines could 
(from Sardinia) get admittance to Spain more than elsewhere?" 

From the apostolic age Spain had been a marked field of 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEKS. 223 

Christian labor, and the people there were doubtless ripe for 
an anti-ritualistic movement. 

THE LETJTHAKDITSS— ARNOLDITES, A. D. 1150. 

But the record of non-ritualists may still be unrolled, 
thereby unfolding the record of the true spiritual Church of 
Christ, kept alive amid the surrounding darkness and apostasy 
of ritualism in the Papal Church ; having this insignia of its 
genuineness, viz., " The blood of the martyrs is the seed of 
the Church ; " thus marking where the " little flock," to whom 
the kingdom is given, may be found. Neander says : 

" According to Dolcino. a reformer of the twelfth century, ' The last period 
that might be called the time of the Holy Ghost (has come), inasmuch as the 
distinguishing characteristic of this period was to be the free inspiration by 
the Holy Spirit in the apostolical benediction, and righteousness of a life no 
longer depending, as before, on outward means and ordinances, but purely 
producing itself from within outwards.'" 

Neander then gives an account (vol. iii. p. 603) of one 
Leuthard, who appeared among the country people of 
France, and claiming to have a vision from God calling him 
to preach, he went into a church to pray, and finding there 
a cross and an image of Christ, he demolished them both. 

" Not certainly," says Neander, " out of spite to Christianity, for he him- 
self appealed to the Sacred Scriptures ; but, most probably, because he imagined 
he saw in them something that savored of idolatry. ... In support of all he 
said he quoted the testimony of the Scriptures." 

Arnold (of Brescia), a disciple of Abelard, an eminent 
reformer of the twelfth century, by his bold and lofty spirit, 
his knowledge of Christian antiquities, and the vehement 
eloquence of his public harangues, roused Italy, France, and 
Switzerland against the abuses of the Roman Church and 
clergy, and even converted the Pope's legate to his opinions. 
He was charged with heresy, and, together with his adherents, 
called Arnoldites, was excommunicated by Innocent II. 
" But it is probable," says Davenport, " his real crime was 
his having taught that the Church ought to be divested of its 
worldly possessions and reduced to its primitive simplicity." 



224 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Dr. Wall allows that he was condemned along with Peter de 
Bruys, for rejecting infant baptism. 

In 1114, he appeared at Home, and there elevated the 
standard of civil and clerical reform, with such success as to 
gain even the Bom an senate; and for ten years possessed the 
chief power in the Eternal City. Adrian IV. succeeded, 
however, in expelling him, in 1155, by laying an interdict on 
the city. The reformer retired to Tuscany, but was there 
seized and taken back to Eome, where he died by the hands 
of the executioner, being excommunicated, crucified, and 
burned. 

"It is to be remembered," Neander says, "that it was by means of these 
reformers and Oriental sects that the Scriptures were diffused among laymen. 
Touching the mode of procedure against false teachers, it is to be observed 
that it was Byzantine despotism which set the example of enforcing conviction 
by the fagot and the sword. The Western Church had originally declared 
itself opposed to such a procedure (yet not always with self-consistency), but 
the fanaticism of this age found no punishment too severe for those who were 
regarded as godless outcasts ; and the clergy followed the general current of 
the times. From common practice grew up the theory of ecclesiastical law, 
which was supported by the grand mistake of confounding together the dif- 
ferent positions of the Old and New Testaments. The fanatical fury of the 
people, having been once roused against the heretics, and an abstemious life 
having come to be regarded as a characteristic mark of heretics, sprung from 
the Oriental sects in Greece, Mesopotamia, Armenia, etc. These men who dis- 
tinguished themselves by the rigid severity of their lives were constantly 
liable to incur the opprobrium of heresy; aye, and even to be falsely accused 
of secret immoralities," as Neander admits, "insomuch," as he says, "that a 
writer of this period could say that a pallid face was looked upon by the 
people as a sure sign of heresy; and good Catholics have fallen victims, to- 
gether with heretics, to the blind fury of the mob." 

Thus it seems that the blind fury of persecutors became so 
impetuous as not to stop to discern friend from foe, and many a 
poor Papist of a cadaverous countenance had to pay the for- 
feit of his appearance (as Peter almost — for his bewraying 
speech) with his life. Such is the madness the blood-thirsty 
spirit of persecution begets. " Being exceedingly mad against 
the saints," says Paul, " I persecuted them even unto strange 
cities." 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 225 

But the most extensive anti-ritualistic protest since the 
immediate post-apostolic age occurred during the latter 
period of what are termed the middle ages, in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, though commencing a century or two 
earlier. Here was developed a great revolt from the Papacy 
and its usages, extending throughout Italy and large portions 
of Europe, under the banner of a people calling themselves 

THE CATHARISTS, A. D. 1200. 

This name, from the Greek word Katharos, pure or perfeet y 
was adopted to designate the fact that they assayed to purify 
themselves from the corruptions of the dominant Church, and 
to witness against all sin everywhere! These embraced 
nearly all the Protestants of the period named, and were far 
more numerous than any other class of Protestants prior to 
the Lutheran reformation. 

Neander, vol. iv. p. 574, thus speaks of them : 

" They sought to point out the opposition between the Old Testament and 
the New, and appealed to the opposition between the Sermon on the Mount 
and the Mosaic law. . . . They said of the members of the dominant Church 
that they had sunk back on the foundation of the Mosaic law. . . . They 
contended not only against infant baptism, with arguments always readily 
presenting themselves against the institution as apostolical, but also against 
water-baptism generally. . . . When it was objected that Christ had suffered 
himself to be baptized by John, they replied it had been done on the part of 
Christ by way of accommodation to a prevailing custom, and to avoid giving 
offence. 

" The Church, moreover, had for a time used water-baptism, because 
men were accustomed to the rite, or because it would invite them by this 
symbol to the baptism of the Spirit. They affirmed that in the Sacred Scrip- 
tures baptism was a term often employed to express repentance, or the preach- 
ing of the divine word. The baptism of the Spirit — the true baptism — should 
be performed by the imposition of hands, in connection with prayer, which 
they designated by the term consolamentum. In evidence of the power and 
significance of this act, they referred to the Apostles Peter and John, who were 
sent to Samaria for the purpose of communicating, by the imposition of hands, 
the Holy Ghost to those who had received water-baptism. 

" In regard to the Lord's Supper, they explained the words of the institution 
in a symbolic sense : 'This is,' they made equivalent to — 'this signifies my 
body.' They referred in proof to those paragraphs in the New Testament, 
15 



226 RITUALISM DETHKQXED. 

■where the thing itself is mentioned in place of that which it may serve to 
represent, as for example, 1 Cor. 5. 4 : 'And did all drink the same spiritual 
drink/ etc. They referred to the fact that Christ himself says, ' My Jlesh 
profiteth nothing — my icords are spirit and life' — i. e., are to be spiritually 
understood! Christ's words by which he communicates himself .are his true 
body. They combated the doctrine of the sacrament of penance, . . . con- 
tending against the externalization of religion in the dominant Church. They 
said, ' God dwells not in houses made with hands.' The Catharists were 
zealous in disseminating their principles everywhere. According to "the testi- 
mony of their first opponents themselves, it wan their blameless and strict 
mode of life that distinguished the Catharists generally ; for they abstained 
from cursing and swearing, and a simple yea or nay was a substitute with 
them for the strongest attestations. 

" The most absurd reports of unnatural excesses and other abominations said 
to be committed in the secret assemblies of the sect were spread among the 
multitude — accusations similar to those brought against the primitive Chris- 
tians by the Jews, and such as are ever icont to be repeated against all opjio- 
nents of a dominant religion. The fanatical multitude exercised a speedy 
justice, hurrying away much people at once to the stake!" 

Yet their zeal resulted in a wide spread of their principles. 
Says Xeander : 

"According to the testimony of Sacchoni, who had been for seventeen years 
one of them, but who afterward wrote against them, there were countless 
numbers who belonged to the second class of Catharists" — ?'. e., who were 
not of the ascetic class, but only four thousand belonging to the class of the 
"perfects " 

This was written in the early part of the thirteenth century. 

Neander is forced to admit (p. 590) that these non-ritual- 
istic sects exerted an advantageous influence; just as he 
affirms of Paul, in the planting of the Church, that he 
" effected more without Judaism than all the other apostles 
with their Judaism." 

"They, the Catharists, Arranians, Paulicians, etc.," says Xeander, "awaked 
in the ignorant and uninstructed people, who had been misled by incompetent 
priests to place the essence of religion in a round of ceremonies, a more lively 
interest in spiritual concerns. They called up in them the idea of a divine 
life, presented religion to them more as a matter of inward experience, and, 
perhaps, as this was the particular bent of the Paulicians, made them better 
acquainted with the Scriptures; for there can be little doubt that by means 
of the Paulicians translations of particular portions of the Scriptures were 
already circulated among the laity." 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 227 

Here, then, was the true Protestantism of that era. 

"When the laity, thus awaked, spoke from their own experience, when, in 
the attitude of polemics, and combating the additions foreign to Bible Chris- 
tianity in the doctrine of the Church, they were able to bring forward their 
arguments from the teachings of Christ and the apostles, it is easy to see how 
superior they would prove in disputation to the ignorant and incompetent 
clergy." 

Where is the record of any other Protestants like unto 
these in moral power and influence in all these centuries? 

But we have not finished the record of the true Church, 
known by the infallible sign of purity-seeking, and the endur- 
ance of persecution inflicted by a false church, and ever 
specially instigated by the priests of that false church, as it 
has been from the beginning (see Gal. iv. 29), "He that 
is born after the flesh (only) persecutes him that is born 
after the Spirit." Thus also the true Church may be distin- 
guished from the false — for the true Church never persecutes. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS (Continued)— A 
HIDDEN EECOED EEVEALED. 

THE MYSTICS, A. D. 1250-15CX). 

The term Mystic by Papists, and some Protestants, whose 
conception of religion and the Christian life is that they are 
mainly the observance of the externals of the Church, their 
rubrics and ceremonials, has been used as a term of reproach 
applied to all those sects and portions of the Church which 
teach rather that the Christian faith in its manifestation reveals 
an inner life, a moral transformation and regeneration of 
man's spiritual nature, resulting in the death of sin, and an 
internal consciousness of soul-communion with God. 

Vagarists, like a Coeceius or a Sivedenborg, have been styled 
Mystics by both Papists and Protestants, for a very different 
reason it is true, viz., for giving loose rein to conceit and 
fancy, both in their interpretation of Scripture and their 
general religious theorizing ; but those that Papal and some 
Protestant historians have usually called The Mystics have 
been, in the ages in which they lived, the very elect of God, 
the salt and life of the Church of Christ, the savor of whom 
was almost the only evidence that there was still extant a 
living Church of the Lord Jesus among men. Yet all these 
have been to a great extent non-ritualists and non-sacramen- 
tarians, both in spirit and practice. They were protestants 
against the sacra m en tizing tendencies of the Church of Rome 
from ihe outset. 

The Mystics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, accord- 
ing to Neander, were but the shelving out of the Protestant- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NOX-BAPTIZERS. 229 

ism of the second, third, and fourth centuries ; and of which 
Justin Martyr, Tatian, Marcion, Ambrose, and Origen were 
noted examples. Justin dwells much upon the true baptism 
(of the Spirit), and Origen, much upon the indwelling Christ. 
Formalists and ceremonialists, in all ages, have been prone 
to call all this Mysticism. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, 
^Yas very much stumbled by just such Mysticism taught by 
Jesus. Paul everywhere preached this great mystery, " Christ 
in you the hope of glory," which the unregenerate "princes 
of this world knew not." Yet this " knowledge " is the ele- 
mental and fundamental distinction of the true "sons of God." 
Christ's kingdom is spiritual. To speak of it, or what apper- 
tains thereto, correctly, is not to speak figuratively or metaphori- 
cally, but to speak didactically and veritably of spiritual things. 
Spiritual entities are as veritable and literal as are material 
or physical entities. Christ's teachings are spiritual, i. e., of 
spiritual things — they need not be spiritualized — they set forth 
technically, and intrinsically, the things of a spiritual king- 
dom, not in allegory, but in plain, didactic teaching. Christ's 
baptism is literally a spiritual baptism. Christ's Supper is 
literally a spiritual Supper. The water of life is literally and 
truly spiritual. The rest to which Christ invites the weary is 
spiritual. The tabernacle which " God pitches and not man " 
is literally a spiritual tabernacle. The Jerusalem from above 
is spiritual. The true circumcision is spiritual. The Chris- 
tian's sacrifices and offerings are not ritual but literally 
spiritual. 

The Mystics well understood this matter. Let us turn to 
the thrilling record. 

BRETHREN AND SISTERS OF THE FREE SPIRIT. 

Turning to " Milman's History of Latin Christianity," we 
find a most striking record that overlaps, in part, the record 
of the Catharists, presenting a phase of Christianity under the 
name of Mysticism which furnishes the proof that there has 
never been a period in which our Lord had not his witnessing 



230 KITUALISM DETHRONED. 

people, a true Church known of him, while all around, espe- 
cially in the popular Church, was darkness in its densest form. 
The record of these will fill up the whole period from the sub- 
sidence of the prevailing influence of the Catharists to the 
days of the Reformation under Luther ; so that no void is 
found since Christ was glorified in which his true spiritual 
Church is not revealed, witnessing against ritualism and 
spiritual wickedness in high places and low. It is true that 
during the period covered by the testimony of the Mystics the 
Waldenses, Albigenses, and others, witnessed against the 
Popish hierarchy, but there was no light so clear, glorious, 
and extensive as this. In vol. viii. of the above work, on pp. 
396 and on, we find the following record : 

"From 1247 to 1272 the Franciscan Bertholdt, of Winterthur, 
preached with amazing success through Bavaria, Austria, Moravia, and 
Thuringen. The dissidents under their various names were everywhere. 
At the beginning of the fourteenth century Alsace was almost in posses- 
sion of the 

"BRETHREN AND SISTERS OF THE FREE 
SPIRIT. 

" They were driven out and scattered ; but expulsion and dispersion, 
if it does not multiply the numbers, usually increases the force and 
power of such communities. Mysticism within the Church strove to fill 
the void caused by their expulsion. Of these Mystics the most famous 
names are Bysbroeck of Cologne, Master Eckhart, John Tauler, and 
Nicolas of Basle. The life of Tauler will show us the times and the 
personal influence of these men. 

" It occupies all the early part of the fourteenth century. . . . No 
wonder that religious men sought that religion in themselves which 
they found not in the Church and in the cloister. They took refuge in 
the sanctuary of their own thoughts from the religion which was con- 
testing the world. 

" In all the great cities rose a secret organized brotherhood, bound to- 
gether by silent, infelt sympathies, and self-named 

"THE FRIENDS OF GOD. 

" This appellation marked a secession, a tacit revolt, an assumption of 
superiority. ' God was not to be worshipped,' they said, ' in the Church 
alone, with the clergy alone, with the monk alone, in the ritual, or even 
in the sacraments. He was within, in the heart, and in the life. This 
and kindred brotherhoods embraced all orders, priests, monks, friars, 
nobles, burghers, and peasants. They had their prophets and proph- 
etesses, above all, their preachers. Some convents were entirely in their 
power. They sided with the town councils in denouncing the unlawful- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 231 

ness and wickedness of closing the clinrches against the poor. Christian 
love/ they claimed, ' was higher and holier than bishop or Pope.' They 
were Mystics to the height of Mysticism — each believer was in direct 
union with God — with the Trinity, not the Holy Ghost alone ! They 
denied all special prerogative to the clergy, the laymen had equal sanc- 
tity, equal communion with the Deity, saw visions and uttered prophe- 
cies. Their only sympathy with the Waldensians was their anti-sacer- 
dotalism. . . . They honored, loved the Bible, but sought and obtained 
revelations beyond. . . . Temptations were a mark of God's favor, not 
to be deprecated. But though suffering was a sign of the divine love, it 
was not to be self-inflicted suffering. They disclaimed asceticism, self- 
maceration, and self-torture. All things to the beloved were of God, all 
therefore indifferent — seclusion, poverty, death. . . . 

" Nicolas of Basle, as specially inspired, held boundless influence and 
authority over all, whether ' Friends of God,' or not, over Tauler, Kuhl- 
man, Mersevin, and others. . . . As the days of the Church grew darker, 
under the later Popes, visions multiplied. Nicolas visited Gregory XI. 
at Rome to reprove the Pope's inertness, his sins. Gregory, at first in- 
dignant, was soon overawed and won by the commanding holiness of 
Nicolas." 

Tauler the Preacher of the Higher Christian 
Life. 

" John Tauler was an earnest disciple and powerful apostle of this 
lofty Mysticism. He preached with wonderful success in Strasburg, 
in some of the neighboring convents, in towns, and villages, and 
cities. He journeyed even to Cologne, the seat of this high Mysticism, 
where the famous Eysbroeck taught with the utmost power and popu- 
larity. . . . Tauler threw aside all scholastic subtleties ; he strove to be 
plain, simple, comprehensible to the humblest understanding. He 
preached in German, with deferential citations in Latin. Tauler sought 
no Papal license — it was his mission, it was his imperative duty, as a 
priest, to preach the gospel. . . . 

"But Tauler was to undergo a sterner trial — to be trained in another 
school. In Basle he had been marked by men of a different caste, the 
gauge of his mind had been taken, the depths of his heart sounded, his 
raligion weighed and found wanting. In Strasburg appeared a stranger, 
who five times sat at the feet of Tauler and listened to his preaching with 
serious, searching earnestness. He was a layman ; he sought an interview 
with Tauler, confessed to him, received the sacrament at his hands. He 
then expressed the wish that Tauler would preach how man may attain 
perfection, that perfection which he might aspire to on earth. Tauler 
preached his loftiest Mysticism. The stern stranger now spoke with 
authority, the authority of a more determinate will, a more firm convic- 
tion, 'Thou art yet in slavery to the letter ; thou knowest not the life- 
giving Spirit ; thou art but a Pharisee ; thou trustest in thine own power, 
in thine own learning ; thou thinkest that thou seekest God's honor, and 
seekest thine own.' Tauler shuddered, ' Never man before reproved me 
for my sins.' He felt the spell of a master. 'Twelve years,' said the 
layman that was rebuking the self-righteousness of Tauler, ' I have been 
toiling to the height of spiritual perfection, which I have now attained, 



232 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

.... by self-rnortification and chastisement, which have now ceased to 
be necessary.' 

"He gave Tauler simple moral rules, counselled him to preach no 
more, to hear no more confession, to deny himself, and to meditate on the 
life and death of Christ, till he had obtained humility and regeneration. 
.... Tauler, for about two years, despite the wonder of his friends, and 
the taunts of his enemies, was silent. 

" The first time, at the end of this period, when he attempted to preach 
he broke down in a flood of tears. 

" The stranger who thus reproved and won him was the famous 
Nicolas of Basle. The secret influence of these teachers, unsuppressed 
by years of persecution, may appear by the work thus wrought in the 
mind of Tauler, and from the fact that long after Tauler's death, that 
Nicolas of Basle, venturing into France, was seized and burned as a 
heretic at Vienne, in Dauphiny. 

" Tauler adhered to the Church ; many of the Waldenses did so, to escape 
persecution, and to infuse their own zeal. From that time the German 
preaching of Tauler (now unmingled with Latin) in churches, in private 
assemblies, in the houses of Beguines, in nunneries, was more plain, 
earnest, and as usual flowed from his own heart to the hearts of others. 
He taught estrangement from the world, self-denial, poverty of spirit ; 
not merely passive surrender of the soul to God, but with this, love also, 
to the brethren, and the discharge of the duties of life. Men were to 
seek peace during these turbulent times, within their own souls. He not 
only preached in German (not in the unknown Latin tongue), he pub- 
lished in German, ' on following the lowly life of Christ J 

" The black plague fell on the city of Strasburg, which was still under 
the ban of the Pope.* In Strasburg died 16,000 ; in Basle, 14,000 vic- 
tims. Amid these terrible times of wild visions, wild processions of 
self-scourged penitents, of crowded cloisters, and massacred Jews, the calm 
voice of Tauler, and of some who spoke and wrote in the spirit of Tauler, 
rose against the unpitying Church, and remonstrance was addressed to 
the clergy, that the poor, innocent, blameless people were left to die un- 
tended . . . refused the last consolations of the gospel. ' Christ died for 
all men,' said they ; ' the Pope cannot by his interdict close heaven 
against those who die innocent.' In another paper the broad maxim 
was laid down, that he who confesses the true faith of Christ, and sins 
only against the person of the Pope, is no heretic. The people took com- 
fort, and died in peace, though under the Papal interdict. 



* In the fourteenth century, the citizens of Frankfort-on-the-Oder resisted 
their ecclesiastical superiors, were excommunicated, and remained for twenty- 
eight years without baptism or other rites. The return of the priests to per- 
form their accustomed ceremonies seems to have been regarded as a farce. 

The author of the "Ploughman's Complaint," speaking the secret anti-papal 
sentiments of the masses of the people of England, about the same time calls 
out for the spiritual baptism, thus, " Ah, Lord, thou hadst thy disciples go and 
full en (purify) all the folk in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost," 
which was tantamount to claiming that they did not need the water-baptism 
administered by the priests. 



CHRONICLES OF THE XOX-BAPTIZERS. 233 

" It was for these unforgiven opinions that Tauler and his friends, 
Thomas of Strasburg and Ludolph of Saxony, fell under the suspicion 
of the new Bishop Bertholdt and the clergy. [Note, in all the history 
of the Church, few, if any, have ever sutiered persecution but at the 
prompting of the corrupt clergy.] 

''Tauler had been called to render an account of his faith before 
Charles IV., the priest's emperor, when at Strasburg. The Mystics 
were commanded to recant, to withdraw from their writings these ob- 
noxious tenets. 

" Tauler disappeared from Strasburg, he was now heard in Cologne. 
He returned to Strasburg only to die, a. b. 1361. His last hours 
were passed in the garden of the convent in which his only sister had 
long dwelt, a holy and blameless nun. He sought her gentle aid and 
consolation. One hard Mystic reproached his weakness in yielding to 
this last earthly affection. He was buried in the cloisters, amid the re- 
spectful sorrow of the whole city. 

" Tauler had been dead nearly a century before the close of our history 
(1450), but his sermons lived in the memory of men; they were tran- 
scribed with pious solicitude and disseminated among all who sought 
something beyond what was taught in the Church, and that which the 
ritual, performed, perhaps, by a careless, proud and profligate priest, did 
not suggest, and which was not heard in the cold and formal confessional 
which man might learn for himself, teach to himself; which brought the 
soul in direct relation with God — trained it to perfection — to communion, 
to assimilation, to unity with God." 



Tauler's Keligion Unselfish and Unceremonial. 

" Tauler's Mysticism was far beyond the sublime selfishness of a Kempis' 
'Imitation of Christ' — it embraced fully, explicitly, the love of others. 
But it resembled a Kempis in that it was absolutely and entirely personal 
religion, self-wrought out, sell-disciplined, self-matured, with nothing 
necessarily intermediate between the grace of God and the soul of man. The 
man might be perfect in spirit and in truth, within himself, spiritualized 
only by the Holy Ghost ! Tauler's perfect man was a social being, not 
a hermit ; his goodness spread on earth : it was not all drawn up to 
heaven. Though the perfect man might not rise above duties, he might 
rise above observances; though never free from the law of love to his 
fellow-men, he claimed a dangerous freedom as regarded the laws and 
usages of the Church and dependence on the ministers of the Church. 
Those who were content with ritual observances, however obedient, were 
still imperfect ; outward rites, fastings, were good as means, but the soul 
must liberate itself from all these outward means : . . . must still await some- 
thing higher, something to which all this is but secondary, inferior ; 
having attained perfection it may cast away all these things as unnecessary. 
The whole vital real work in man is within. 

" Penance is naught without contrition. Mortify not the poor flesh, 
but mortify sin. Man must confess to God. Unless man forsakes sin 
the absolution of Popes and Cardinals is of no effect ! the confessor has 
no power over sin. His own works make not a man holy : how can those 
of others ? Will God regard the rich man who buys for a pitiful sum 



23£ RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

the prayers of the poor ? Not the intercession of the Virgin, nor of all 
th 3 saints, can profit the unrepentant sinner. 

" All this, if not rebellion, was sowing the seeds of rebellion against 
the sacerdotal, dominatiox ; . . . Tauler lived not only in his writings. 
The cherished treasure of Mysticism was handed down by minds of 
] indred spirit for nearly two centuries. They were afterward appealed 
1 > by Luther as the harbinger of his own more profound and powerful 
, I'ligiousness : the ' Friends of God ' persisted, if not organized, to 
maintain visibly, if not publicly, their succession of apostolic holiness ! " 

Here was the true " apostolic succession." And mark, if we 
/ose sight of these anti-ritualistic " dissidents," as Milman 
terms them, and the long prior array of protesting non-ritual- 
ists, before cited, we have no continuous Church of Christ — 
there would be found long periods without any of the semi- 
ritualistic sects, such as the Donatists, AValdenses, Arnoldists, 
and the Baptists and Pedo-Baptists of our day. That the 
Papal, Lutheran, and Episcopal Churches are still ritualistic, 
who will deny ? With the record of these protesting anti- 
ritualists we have one continuous "succession" of the Church 
in the apostolic spirit, work and sufferings. But to conclude 
our narrative of the anti-ritualistic " Friends of God : " 

" Ten years after the death of Tauler, Nicolas of Basle, not yet having ven- 
tured on his fatal mission into France, is addressing a long and pious monition 
to the ' Brethren of St. John' in Strasburg. Near the close of the century, 
Martin, a monk, was arraigned at Cologne, as an infatuated disciple of Nico- 
las of Basle. From this process it appears that many 'Friends of God' had 
been recently burned at Heidelberg. As says Anhang, p. 238, 'Who were 
judged and convicted by the Church in Heidelberg, as impenitent heretics, 
and were burned together, if they were amid Dei, the friends of God.'" 

It was at an age when (as Milman records on p. 395, " Latin 
Christianity ") men could do such things. 

"As the Dominican Conrad, one of the holy Papal orders — who had been 
forced at times to leave the overcrowded church for the open air, on account 
of the multitudes which gathered round the fierce Inquisitor to hear his ser- 
mons, and to witness, at the conclusion of his sermons, the burning of a holo- 
caust of heretics." 

" Tauler was, therefore, one of the voices, if not the most powerful and in- 
fluential, which appealed directly to God, from the Pope and the hierarchy; 
which asserted a higher religion than that of the Church; which made salva- 
tion dependent on personal belief and holiness, not on obedience to the priest; 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 235 

which endeavored to renew the long-dissolved wedlock between Christian faith 
and Christian morality; and tacitly admitted the great Wycliffite doctrine, 
that the bad Pope, the bad Bishop, the bad Priest, was neither Pope, Bishop 
nor Priest. It was an appeal to God, and also to the moral sense of man, and 
throughout this period of nearly two centuries succeeding, before the appearance 
of Luther, this inextinguishable torch passed from hand to hand, from genera- 
tion to generation." 

We have presented to the reader these extended extracts 
from Milman, that the reader may see where the Reformation 
commenced, or, rather, how its spirit was maintained in these 
more recent pre-Reformation ages, as in all the former — a 
record with which our modern churches are not familiar, be- 
cause many of them are only half-reformed from ritualism 
themselves, and their historians have ignored the true history 
of the Church of Christ in the vain effort to trace a ritualistic 
and canonical descent of Christianity through the dark ages. 
No such canonical descent can be traced ; but the true spiritual 
Church, the persecuted bride of* Christ, with all her beautiful 
garments of salvation, which the ritualistic churches have 
called the marks of heresy, can be traced. Deem them heretics 
whoever will, for their anti-ritualism, they have been God's 
" peculiar people," God's chosen witnesses during all the ages 
of Church apostasy. As conceded by Milman (vol. vii. p. 408) : 

" Their influence was seen in the earnest demand for reformation by the 
councils; the sullen estrangement notwithstanding the reunion under the 
sacerdotal yoke during the Hussite wars; the disdainful neutrality when re- 
formation by the councils seemed hopeless ; it is seen in the remarkable book, 
the ' German Theology,' attributed by Luther to Tauler himself— of which two 
translations have recently appeared in England, yet of which the real charac- 
ter and importance cannot be appreciated without a full knowledge of the time 
at which it originated. Its value," says Milman, " was not so much what it 
taught as ' German theology,' but what it threw aside as no part of genuine 
CJtristian faith." 

Thus was the German impatience of ecclesiastical dominion 
manifested, foreshadowing that when the impending Revolu- 
tion should come it would be altogether irresistible. 



236 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 



Result of the Revival of Letters. 

The revival of letters also, compelling the priests to reason, 
and prove or yield their pretensions, was a great preparatory- 
step to the Reformation. They were not permitted to decide 
all questions by authority, and thus hold honest and thinking 
minds in bonds of superstition. And if the semi-ritualists of 
our day would forget the dictum of their church creeds and 
church authorities, and come down to the merits of the ques- 
tion, and reason concerning their rituals and sacraments, there 
would be some prospect of an open door from the wilderness 
or labyrinth in which their ritualism still holds them. 

The ritualists of the Christian era must needs traverse the 
wilderness of rites without any compass, and build their super- 
structure without any plan or pattern. In taking leave of 
Milman, we may well cite his words as on p. 503, vol. viii. : 

"The Latin, or more objective faith (in forms), tends to materialism, to ser- 
vility, to blind obedience or blind guidance, to the tacit abrogation, if not 
repudiation, of moral influence by the undue elevation of the dogmatic or ritual 
part. It is prone to become Paganism with Christian images, symbols and 
terms: it sets itself, in its consummate state, altogether above and apart from 
Christian and universal morality, and makes what are called works of faith 
(i. <?., in church forms) the whole of religion : as the murderer who, while he 
sheathes his dagger in the heart of his victim, if he meantime does homage to 
the image of the Virgin, he is still religious ; or the tyrant, if he retires in Lent 
in sackcloth and ashes, may live the rest of the year in promiscuous concubi- 
nage, and slaughter his subjects (for conscience' sake) by thousands, and still 
be religious ! " 

Thus it is the ritualist that becomes the antinomian, and 
not he who worships God only in spirit and in truth.* 

In Rysbroeck of Cologne we find but the counterpart of the 
teachings of Tauler throughout. 

* The Ceremonial. — Surely the coming of Christ was the great epoch and 
central fact of time. Types and ceremonies had their place before it, pointing 
forward to it. They are now but as finger-boards beyond the goal, pointing 
the wrong. way — pointing to the law that made nothing perfect. Looking at 
the shadowy past, we behold them as shadowing of good things to come. So 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 237 

THE PETRO-BRTJSSIANS, SCOURGERS, ETC. 

Collateral as to time with the Friends of God were the Petro- 
Brussians and other non-ritualistic sects. Indeed, a branch 
of the Waldensian Church, following the lead of Nicolas of 
Basle, who was originally one of them, came into general 
agreement with the Friends of God. 

Says Neander, vol. v. p. 390 : 

'•'The predominating spirit of mysticism communicated itself also to them, 
and there grew up a section of Waldensian Friends of God which, paying less 
homage than did the others to the church spirit, developed itself with greater 
freedom of doctrine in opposition to the dominant Church." 

Yet these, perhaps, did not reach farther in their anti- 
ritualism than Tauler's preparatory stage to the highest 
spiritual life. 

Says ISTeander, vol. v. p. 408 : 

" We have seen how Tauler regarded the pious ohservance of all outward 
rites prescribed by the Church as a preparatory school for the highest stage 
of spirituality. . . . The casting aside of these ordinances should not be a 
purposed thing : it should be a natural falling off of them, as if the internal 
development of the religious life had progressed to such a point that the out- 
ward rites, no longer needed as supports, should fall away of themselves." 

Yet Tauler adds : 

"We gladly strip away the leaves to let the sun pour its rays without hin- 
drance upon the young grapes ! So all helps that become hindrances fall away 
from the Christian." 

This was the sentiment also of the " Beghards " and of the 
"Brethren of the Free Spirit." The " Scourgers " an- 
nounced that all the sacraments in the Church were profaned 
by her pollutions and had lost their validity ; that but one 
sacrament remained, which was to copy after their manner 

far as they are nllowed to stretch into the Christian era, they are but shadows 
of shadows — nothing more. John's baptism was the fulfilling, the dying effort 
of the Ceremonial. It prepared the way for the true baptism, and as the 
spent surges of ocean prostrate themselves at the base of some mighty rock, so 
the Ceremonial reverently laid itself down at the feet of Christ, and the eternal 
JVIor.yl Law stands thereby revealed and upheld. — Friend's Review. 



238 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

(of self-scourging) the sufferings of Christ. This was self- 
applying the baptism which Christ said he must be " baptized 
with." Many of these died at the stake. In truth, nearly all 
the dissidents from Rome, from the days of the Catharists to 
Luther, were permeated with the non-sacramentarian spirit. 
As says Neander, vol. iv. p. 592 : 

" Of the Catharists we afterward meet with no farther traces; but that re- 
action of the Christian consciousness was continually exhibiting itself in other 
forms. . . . We saw how the reforming bent of the Hildebrandian epoch 
invited the laity to rise against the corrupt clergy. . . . Thus arose sepa- 
ratist tendencies — the laity would hare nothing to do with the clergy. Such 
people, they thought, were unfitted to perform any sacramental act. From 
these beginnings it was easy to proceed farther, to declare the sacraments of the 
corrupt Church generally null and void!" 

Thus a sect arose in the territory of Cologne, under the lead 
of Peter of Brtjis, which drew upon themselves the atten- 
tion of their common opponent. 

Keander, vol. iv. p. 593, says of them : 

" The worldly and corrupt Church, they taught, had lost the power of ad- 
ministering the sacraments ! The successors of Peter (the apostle) had lost 
their authority, because they had not followed him in a life of consecration to 
God ! Baptism in the Church was the only rite they would acknowledge, and 
they acknowledged this because, whoever might administer the rite, it was 
still Christ that baptized. As, then, they did not substitute the consolamen- 
tum in the place of baptism, they were, by this circumstance, distinguished 
from the Catharists." 

He, with the Pietists and many others in the south of 
France, rejected infant baptism as non-apostolical, and in 
rejecting the mass repudiated the Lord's Supper altogether, 
saying that Christ alone could administer it — and this he 
had done but once — and that was to be the end thereof for 
all time. 

^ THE WALDENSES AND ALBIGENSES, 
A. D. 1100-1500. 

The history of these Protestants of the mountains and val- 
leys of Italy and France affords another illustration of the 
warping effects of going to the records of mediaeval dissent to 



CHKOXICLES OF THE If ON-BAPTI2 <3KS. 239 

find our Church. The full, unbiased history of these Christian 
reformers has seldom, if ever, been given by any one church 
historian. Jones has given the Baptist version, and Conkling 
and Hendrick the' Pedo-Baptist, version. But when all the 
records are collated, not only of these men, but all others that 
are accessible, the reader will not require an extended period 
of time to deduce the evidence that he can find among the 
Waldenses " neither your Church nor mine." True, they were 
Protestants from Rome, and in this generic sense they were 
homogeneous with all Protestant sects. But when you inquire 
after the particulars of their faith and customs, no church of 
the present day fully answers to the pattern. 

Their immediate predecessors, furnishing the first outlines 
of their faith, were undoubtedly the Catharists; these were 
scattered among those valleys of Piedmont and elsewhere, in 
fleeing from persecution, and formed the germ of the Wal- 
densian Church. This is admitted by every historian we have 
scanned ; each traces the record of the Waldenses through the 
Catharists and Paulicians to the primitive protesting sects, 
the Donatists, Novatians, Erians, etc., i. e., in tracing the ac- 
credited Protestant Church. 

During 600 Years all Protestants Rejected Water- 
Baptism. 

And if a continuous record of dissent from Rome and the 
continuous light of a pure Church be asserted, this is the only 
method of sustaining the assertion ; for it is a veritable his- 
torical fact that for six hundred years, i. e., from A. d. 500 to 
A. d. 1100, no such Church can be found but among the non- 
ritualistic (non-baptizing) Euchites, Paulicians and Catharists. 
True, Claude and Paulinus in the seventh century did preach 
against some of the corruptions of Rome, still remaining, how- 
ever, in the Roman Church ; there was no protest and schism, 
save as we have named, that would be claimed as the record 
of the true Protestant Church. 

The Waldenses and Albigenses being but a continuation of 



240 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

the Catharists, we should look to find their principles to a 
greater or less extent preserved among them, and this we do 
find in every respect save that of the practice of baptism and 
the supper, and it is difficult now to tell how far they departed 
from the non-ritualists before them in respect to these. It is 
certain that Peter Waldo found the same division of the con- 
gregations into auditors and perfects, or catechumens, and 
accepted, as had been maintained in all the non-ritualistic as 
well as Catholic Churches. Whether he found baptism only 
permitted, or really required of those who entered upon the 
estate of the perfects, history leaves a doubt. There is no 
doubt that they rejected the (infant) baptism of the Catholics; 
and also, rejecting the other mummeries which the Papal 
Church mingled with their baptism, they (Yv r aldo at least) 
prescribed immersion for adults, catechumens or infants, that 
the impression of the one act of baptism might be thereby en- 
hanced in order to atone for the lack of other ceremonies, 
Some assert that they rejected infant baptism altogether; 
others, that they did not. The probability is, that, like all 
their baptizing predecessors, Catholic or Protestant, they bap- 
tized the infants of proselytes when received, but usually 
required their own members to train their households as 
catechumens to a certain age — as did their prototypes, and 
also the Mennonites that came after — ere they were baptized. 
But this baptism was not a "sacrament" with them, for there 
were no canonical priests to consecrate the water and admin- 
ister it. But why does this catechumen baptism differ from 
infant baptism, for what catechumen at the age of sixteen or 
eighteen is either self-responsible or self-judging respecting his 
baptism ? As well look for the children of Jews to grow up 
Christians, or Pagans to turn Jews en masse, as for the cate- 
chized child to be or do otherwise than as instructed. Any 
other result would be a prodigy. 

So far as historic record teaches, Peter "Waldo was the first 
to place baptism and the supper in the Protestant creed as a 
requisite, and this he did in a seeming protest against the per- 



CHKOXICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEKS. 241 

versions of Rome, by rejecting their baptisms and giving the 
cup as well as the bread to the laity — a great step towards 
reform in his day. 

The evidence appears to sustain the record, thus : Peter 
Waldo had a penchant for baptism, as he also had against 
the order of the perfects in the Church, and rejected the latter, 
hut conditlo7ially imposed the former upon the Waldensian 
churches. We say conditionally, for it was required, unless 
" inconvenient," and its saving efficacy was denied ; salvation 
was of God, and not of sacraments and rites in their teaching. 
And as all the Romish adjuncts and sequences of baptism 
were repudiated, and all consecrations, and ordinations, and 
canonical administrations were rejected, we may assume that 
the obligations of baptism hung loosely upon them ; for it is 
doubtful whether lay baptism or self-baptism ever reached 
the dignity of a sacrament either among the Jews or Chris- 
tians.* 

Says the Encyclopedia: 

" They rejected, images, crosses, relics, legends, traditions, auricular con- 
fessions, indulgences, absolution, clerical celibacy, orders, titles, tithes, vest- 
ments, monkery, masses and prayers for the dead, purgatory, invocation 
of saints and of the Virgin Mary, holy water, festival processions, pilgrim- 
ages, vigils, lent, pretended miracles, exorcisms, consecrations, confirmation, 
extreme unction, canonization and the like. They condemned the use of 
liturgies, and, most of all, the wicked lives of both people and clergy in the 
worldly communion of Rome." 

* Denying, as they did, the hierarchy, and claiming the universal priest- 
hood of all saints, and therefore admitting the right (but not imposing the 
obligation) of any of the laity to administer the ceremonies of induction, or 
fellowship, and to preach — of course this would soon remove the charm and 
the sanctity of the " sacrament" from any ritual. Thus would the priestly rule, 
like a magician's wand, which had been based on the sacraments in the Papal 
Church, soon cease, as priests would thus cease to be the sole dispensers of 
heaven's favors through these ; rituals deprived of the canonical charm would 
be no more sacraments than the layman's prayers or exhortations, and being 
intrinsically of no value, would soon dwindle into unmeaning forms or disgust- 
ing mummeries. No Protestant sect has ever maintained the sacraments 
without establishing a ministerial order to consecrate the elements and perform 
the functions of their office canonieally. 
16 



242 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

All this shows that no ceremonial or ritual of the Church 
had any special fascinations for the Waldenses. They clung 
to the Scriptures (valuing most highly the New Testament) 
and to salvation by faith in Christ and a holy life. But the 
effort of any sect of the present time to secure their daguerreo- 
type as a mirror for themselves is fitly rebuked by the editor 
of the Encyclopedia thus. Having alluded to their prin- 
ciples and the light that shone out upon the darkness from 
this body, the editor continues : 

" Hence it is hardly to be wondered at that the Waldenses, like the Scrip- 
tures, have been resorted to by all parties of Protestants in defence of their 
peculiar sentiments ! . . . Each party sought to find a predecessor, and 
to trace a line of succession up to the apostles through these. . . . The 
natural consequence has been, that all have been tempted to mould the charac- 
ter of the Waldenses to the support of their own particular views, instead of 
collecting into one point all the light of history, and calmly abiding the issue. 
For, after all, an uninterrupted succession, however gratifying it may be to 
be able to trace it, is necessary only to a church which regulates its practice 
by tradition, and not by the pure word of God." 

This is well spoken, and the more pertinent will it appear 
when we keep in mind the fact that the exact photograph of 
any mediaeval or earlier sect is not now extant, and never can 
be, for forms may not be ever-enduring, while the life from 
God maybe; and he that seeks the true Church from the 
forms or ceremonials that have been observed by any, is more 
bewildered and is doomed to a more grievous disappointment 
than he that seeks the substance by putting forth his hand to 
touch the shadow! The divine fiat, in writing "change" on 
all things external, has rendered even a divinely appointed 
formula or ceremonial impossible of perpetual continuance. 

But to return to the Protestantism of the Waldenses, we 
will admit that, aside from Peter Waldo's attachment to bap- 
tism and the eucharist, it was complete, and a pattern for all. 
Now the only point we would consider further, touching these 
witnesses for a pure faith and a primitive Christianity, is this: 
How far did this retention of ordinances prevail among that 
people? Neander asserts that many of the Waldenses rejected 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 243 

baptism as a part of Popery and a means of priestly rule, at 
least, as sustaining the sacerdotalism of the priesthood. And 
it is not denied that the Albigenses were non-ritualists to the 
full extent of rejecting all ordinances and sacraments. For 
this reason, and for no other, they are sometimes stigmatized 
with the (designed to be) reproachful title of Manicheans by 
certain historic champions of ritual law. We will, however, 
allow the editor of the Encyclopedia to speak in their defence, 
and not our own pen. He says : 

" Sismoiidi, in his late 'History of the Crusades against the Albigenses/ 
writes thus: ' Those very persons who punished the sectaries with frightful 
torments h;ive alone taken it upon themselves to make us acquainted with 
their opinions, allowing at the same time that they had been transmitted in 
Gaul from generation to generation, almost from the origin of Christianity. 
We cannot be astonished,' he adds, 'if they have represented them to us as 
with all those churches which might render them the most monstrous, mingled 
with all the fables which would serve to irritate the minds of the people 
against those who professed them. Nevertheless, amidst many puerile and 
calumnious tales, it is still easy to recognize the principles of the Reformation 
of the sixteenth century among the heretics who are designated by the name 
of Vaudois or Albigenses.' " 

Dr. Allix, a very learned Protestant writer of France, in 
the latter part of the seventeenth century, wrote a very able 
work — " History of the Ancient Churches of the Albigenses," 
in which he completely exculpates them from the false 
charges of heresy preferred against them by the monks of 
those days, and gives a record of their spread into Spain and 
into England. 

And in proof of the extensive retention and prevalence of 
the non-baptizing doctrines of the Catharists among the Wal- 
denses and Albigenses, we will cite the testimony of Drs. 
Wall and Hibbard, which, because of their hostility (as 
here manifested) to all non-ritualists, is all the better for 
establishing the fact. 

Hibbard, the Methodist writer on Baptism, thus speaks of 

the Waldenses, p. 318 : 

"The word Waldenses simply signifies valleys, or 'inhabitants of valleys,' 
and was applied to all the sects which inhabited those valleys. Of the sects 



244 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

that arose in these regions some were Manicheans, and with many impious and 
absurd tenets denied all water -baptism, retaining only a 'baptism of fire/ as 
they called it, which they administered only to adults." 

Mr. Wall, alluding to these and contiguous sects, says : 

" Though the authors do not well distinguish the names, yet most generally 
these sects that denied all baptism and held other vile opinions are denoted by 
these names, Cathari, Apostolicii, Luciferians, Runcarians, Popelicans, alias 
Publicans, Paulicians," etc. m 

So all these Protestants against the Papal sacramentarian- 
ism held " vile," " impious " and " absurd " opinions — the only- 
one specified being this — they "denied all water-baptism." 
What impiety ! They did not allow sacerdotal hands stained 
with every Papal abomination to regenerate them in baptism, 
or bear consecrated bread to their lips, and thus feed Christ 
to their souls, nor "confirm" them in the Papal faith! 
Climax of impiety ! They rejected the validity and saving 
efficacy of water-baptism and the mass, and preferred to trust 
in Christ, and preach practical holiness and a spiritual regen- 
eration as the doorway into the redeemed Church, whose 
names are written in heaven. Is not their impiety most 
manifest? and is it not equally manifest that the apostate 
Papacy that held the (seven) sacraments as the keys of the 
kingdom, was the true Church of this day? Judge ye! 

That the foregoing testimony as to their prevalence of anti- 
Baptist sentiments in the days and in the ranks of the Wal- 
denses, listen, further in proof, to the record of those that 
claim to be offshoots or branches from this parent stock. 
We quote from the Religious Encyclopedia. 

THE PUBLICANI OR ENGLISH WALDENSES, 
A. D. 1166. 

Of the " Publicani " — a party of English Waldenses — 
Rapin gives the following account of these people on the 
authority of Archbishop Usher : 

" Henry (the king) ordered a council to convene at Oxford, in 1166, to ex- 
amine the tenets of certain heretics called Publicani — very probably the disci- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 245 

pies of the Waldenses who began then to appear. When they were asked in 
the council who they were, they answered, they were Christians and followers 
of the apostles. After that, being questioned upon the creed, their replies 
were very orthodox as to the Trinity and incarnation. But (says Rapin) if 
the historian is to be depended on, they rejected baptism and the eucharist, 
marriage and the communion of saints. They showed a deal of modesty and 
meekness in their whole behavior. When they icere threatened with death in 
order to oblige them to renounce their tenets, they only said, ' Blessed are they 
that sutler for righteousness sake.'" 

The Baptist historian, in order to subsidize the above record 
to his own cause, suggests that it was only infant baptism that 
they rejected — forgetting that up to the period here named, 
infant and adult baptism had ever run parallel with each 
other — unless forsooth, as in the case of State Churches, all 
were required to be baptized in infancy. 

To reject infant baptism among the Papists for many cen- 
turies would be to reject baptism itself. So among the adhe- 
rents of the Church of England at a later day. He also 
interpolates the record of the historian, who does not say they 
rejected early baptism and practised believers' baptism, but 
that they " rejected baptism and the eucharist." * Probably 
they did also reject "marriage" as "solemnized" into a 
"sacrament" by the Papal Church, and (as among the 
Friends of our day) the parties to the marriage union made 
their own vows and plighted the troth for themselves. Their 
"communion of saints" was undoubtedly in the love and 
worship of Christ and fellowship of spirit one with another, 
which is the only true communion of saints! 

* This would make their sentiments harmonize with the Catharists, of which 
the Waldenses were undoubtedly the successors. 

John Allen (a Friend), author of " State Churches," says (p. 474) : "William, 
of Newbury, mentions thirty religious persons who came into England from 
Germany in 1170, and denied baptism and the eucharist. The chief of them 
were Gerard and Dulcimus. They were probably some of the early Wal- 
denses." He adds : " The Waldenses became generally known about the same 
period. They laid little stress on the outward baptism and supper, finding 
fault with the Papists for relying too much on these things." Reyner, their 
historian, says : " Some of them hold that baptism of material water and other 
sacraments profit nothing to salvation." 



246 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 



THE LOLLARDS, A. D. 1350. 

But the teachings of one other branch of the Waldenses, or, 
as Dr. Allix claims, and doubtless more correctly claims, a 
branch of the Albigenses (for the names were oft inter- 
changed and intermingled), we will cite in proof of the 
general non-ritualistic character of those Piedmontese Protes- 
tants and all the early Reformers, and that will suffice in 
respect to these. 

We quote again from the Religious Encyclopedia : 

" Lollards, a religious sect, differing in many points from the Church of 
Rome, arose in Germany, about the beginning of the fourteentb century, . . . 
and were so called from Walter Lollard, a German preacher (as Perrin, in his 
history of the Waldenses, calls him), a man of great renown, who came to 
England in the reign of Edward III. (about A. D. 1315), and who was so emi- 
nent in England that, as in France, they were called Berengarians, from 
Berengarius, and Petro-Brussians, from Peter Bruis, and in Italy and Flanders 
Arnoldists, from the famous Arnold of Brescia; so did the Waldensian Chris- 
tians for many generations after bear the name of this worthy man, being 
called Lollards. Bishop Newton, having mentioned the Lollards, says: 
' There was a man more worthy to have given name to the sect, the deservedly 
famous John Wickliffe, the honor of his own and the admiration of succeeding 
times.' In England the followers of Wickliffe were called Lollards, by way 
of reproach, though the first English Lollards came from Germany. Lollard 
and his followers rejected the sacrifice of the mass, extreme unction, and 
penance for sin, arguing that Christ's sufferings were sufficient. He is likewise 
said to have set aside baptism as a thing of no effect. . . . Among the articles 
required by law, guiding the inquisitors in their examination of the Lollards, 
one was: 'Whether an infant dying unbaptized can be saved?' This the 
Lollards constantly asserted in opposition to the Church of Rome, which de- 
creed that no infant could be saved without it. Fox says, that among the 
errors they were charged with were these : ' That they spoke against the 
opinion of such as think that children are damned who depart before baptism, 
and said that Christian people are sufficiently baptized in the blood of Christ, 

AND NEED NO WATER.' " 

The reader will perceive that here the historian gives a 
flat denial to the glosses and assumptions of the Baptists, that 
the Lollards rejected only infant baptism, for he asserts that 
they held respecting all Christians that they are " sufficiently 
baptized in the blood of Christ;" and, therefore, "need no 



CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 247 

water-baptism" Of course " infant baptism," as well as adult 
baptism, were swept away by their teachings. There might 
have been an occasional ritualistic baptizer among them, as a 
Peter Waldo among the Piedmontese, but the baptism of the 
" blood of Christ " was the only baptism that, as a people, 
they recognized. They set aside the Romish priesthood and 
the sacraments that are connected only with a priesthood. 
And Fox says : 

" It was upon these charges that, in the space of four years, one hundred 
and twenty Lollards were apprehended and suffered greatly, a number of them 
being burned at the stake. . . . From this period to the Reformation, their 
sufferings were very great. More than one hundred are recorded by name 
who were burned to death. The Lollards' tower still stands as a monument 
of their miseries, and uf the cruelty of their implacable enemies. This tower 
was fitted up for this purpose (viz., their persecution) by Chicheby, Archbishop 
of Canterbury. It is said that he expended two hundred and eighty pounds 
to make this prison for the Lollards. The vast staples and rings to which 
they were fastened before they were brought out to the stake are said to be 
seen in a large lumber-room at the top of the palace, and ought to make Pro- 
testants look back with gratitude upon the hour that terminated so bloody a 
period." 

Hence we see that the Waldenses and Albigenses, with 
their branches in England, met with the same visitation of 
fire and fagot, and the wasting sword of martyrdom (until 
many a ten thousand of those in Piedmont and France met 
with death in every conceivable form of torture, as is well 
known), as had been the common retribution upon all former 
non-ritualists and dissidents from the Papal Church. 

And let it be noted that up to this period in our record we 
have found no debates respecting modes of baptism, although it 
is undeniable that a variety of modes has been all along prac- 
tised, nor has there been any recognized order of a priesthood^ 
with its adjunct of sacraments — i. e., among the Protestants — 
from the beginning until this time. True, Tauler maintained 
his position in the Church for influence sake, and his office 
of priest until he fell in his armor, but surely would not have 
taught that Christians may outgrow the need of sacraments 



248 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

(so called) and rituals, if he had recognized them as a stand- 
ing appointment of the Great Head of the Church. 

Martin Luther, therefore, in binding a yoke of bondage to 
sacraments on so many Protestant sects, turned the Church 
backward toward Judaism or the Papacy, rather instead of 
leading it forward in the freedom of Christ, and the unending 
and disgraceful discussions respecting " ordinances " (modes 
of baptism and the Supper) have been the baleful fruits. 



THE OXFORD REFORMERS: ERASMUS, COLET, 
THOMAS MORE, ETC., A. D. 1520. 

While the anti-sacramentarian opposition to the Papacy 
was spreading on the continent, a collateral movement was 
inaugurated in that great centre of theologic and philosophic 
advance — Oxford, England — not taking the form of rejecting 
all rites, at first, as so oft on the continent ; but depreciating 
their sanctity and value, and pleading for a Catholic tolerance 
of differences, and an outward union of all in the one Church 
(centring at Rome, to be sure); but allowing any degree 
of non-conformity or divergence in the ceremonials of the 
Church. True, this effort to maintain such unity in such 
diversity as was manifest on the part of those of the Catholic 
faith on the one hand, and of the Protestant faith on the 
other hand, like Wesley's attempt to maintain an external 
fellowship with the apostatizing Church of England, was 
chimerical. Yet the specific object, the enlarging of an or- 
ganic fold to such a breadth as to receive all that would work 
for Christ and righteousness, was noble and praiseworthy in 
its conception, though not practical in its unfoldings, especially 
in the then state of advance respecting the spirit and terms 
of true Christian fellowship. Yet the attempt led to the 
announcement by Erasmus, Colet, More, etc., of nobly 
true and worthy principles of church organization ; and of 
what constitutes the true Christian life, and the basis of 
Christian union. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES, 249 



Their A^ti-Sacramentarianism. 
In a work of T. Seebohm, entitled The Oxford Reformers, 
on p. 378, etc., we find the following record : 

" Erasmus sought to bring out the facts of Christ's life as the true founda- 
tion of the Christian faith, instead of the dogmas of the scholastic theology. 
After thoughtfully dwelling upon the facts of the life of Christ, he proceeds 
to examine his teachings, and concludes that there were two things which he 
peculiarly and perpetually inculcated — faith and love; and after describing 
them more at length, he writes, 'Read the New Testament through, you will 
not find in it any precept which pertains to ceremonies. Where is there a 
single word of meats or vestments? Where is there any mention of fasts and 
the like? Love alone he calls his precept. Ceremonies give rise to differences ; 
from love flows peace. . . . And yet we burden those who have been made 
free by the blood of Christ, with all those almost senseless, and more than 
Jewish constitutions.'" 

Seebohm, alluding to Colet, p. 386, says : 

"No sooner do most reformers clear away a little ground, and discover what 
they take to be truths, than they attempt, by organizing a sect, founding en- 
dowments, and framing articles and trust-deeds, to secure the permanent tradi- 
tion of their own views to posterity in the form in which they are apprehended 
by themselves. Hence, in the very act of striking off the fetters of the past, 
they are forging the fetters of the future. Even the Protestant Reformers 
whilst on the one hand bravely breaking the yoke under which their ancestors 
had lived in bondage, found themselves, as the result of the Reformation, 
bound still tighter under Tridentine decrees; whilst those who had joined the 
exodus and entered the promised land of the reformers, found it to be a land 
of almost narrower boundaries than the one they had left. ... If Colet did not 
do this, he resisted with a singular wisdom and success a temptation which 
besets every one under his circumstances. . . . But Erasmus expressed the 
view of Colet as well as his own when he said, ' Why should we try to narrow 
what Christ intended to be broad?'" 

So Colet, in bestowing a large endowment upon a college, 
did not bind its faculty to his already conceived ideas, but 
left that faculty open to the progressive light of truth, thus : he 
refused to put his school under the charge of ecclesiastics and 
clergymen ; but committing it to benevolent Christian men, 
in whom it should be manifest that the love of God dwelt, 
he ordains .thus : 

"And notwithstanding these statutes and ordinances before written, in 
which I have declared my mind and will; yet because in time to come many 



250 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

things may and shall survive and grow by many occasions and causes, which 
at the making of this book was not possible to come to mind. . . . Both all 
this that is said, and all that is not said which shall hereafter come into my 
mind while I live. ... I leave wholly to the discretion of the wardens and 
assistants, with such other counsel as they shall call to them, good, lettered 
and learned men, trusting in their fidelity and the love they have to God and 
man and to the school — they to add and diminish of this book, and to supply 
it in every default." 

Reader, is not this a matchless rebuke of the denominational 
endowments, and title-deeds of trust to sectarian bodies — 
whether of colleges, churches, lands, or creeds ! in our day far 
too common ? The language of the above sounds very much 
like that of the large-hearted David Brewster to the Pilgrims 
departing for their bleak wilderness home in New England : 

" I am persuaded that much light of truth is yet to break forth from God's 
word which we have not reached." 

Compare with this the bigotry of Luther, who once could 
make the declaration that all the Greek and other Christians 
who did not acknowledge the primacy of the Pope were here- 
tics and lost, and yet was compelled to admit to Prof. Eck 
that among the articles on which the Council of Constance 
grounded its condemnation of John Huss (for which he was 
burned) were some fundamentally Christian and evangelical ! 
A few months later, after the divine light had reached his 
mind more fully, he was obliged to exclaim : 

" I taught Huss's opinions without knowing them, and so did Staupitz; we 
are all of us Hussites without knowing it ! Paul and Augustine are Hussites ! 
I do not know what to think for amazement ! " 

Bigots and persecutors are all destined to the same amaze- 
ment, either in this life or the next, when they come to see 
how little of the truth they have seen, and how little of the 
love of Christ they have exercised, when they have been 
ready to pour anathemas or the fiery wrath upon those who 
have differed from them in theory, yet were poorer in God's 
sight, perhaps, than they. 

Thomas More, having heard Colet speak with much 
warmth and energy of that living sacrifice of men's hearts, 



CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 251 

which rites and ceremonies were only meant to typify, remem- 
bered the lesson well. Hence we find him in later years re- 
plying with great vigor to a monk who had written an anony- 
mous letter to Erasmus, complaining that Erasmus had denied 
the infallibility of the holy doctors and fathers of the 
Church ! More inquires : 

"Do you deny that they ever made mistakes ? . . . . When Augustine, in 
support of his view, adduced the story of the wonderful agreement of (so- 
claimed) inspired translators of the Septuagint, writing in separate cells, and 
Jerome laughed at the story as absurd, was not one of the two mistaken ? 
When Jerome translated the Epistle to the Galatians, and made it read (as 
now) that Paul censured Peter for dissembling, and Augustine denied that the 
translation was correct in this respect, was not one of them mistaken? .... 
Augustine asserts that demons and angels have material and substantial 
bodies. I doubt not that even you deny this. He asserts that infants dying 
without baptism are consigned to physical torments in eternal punishment. 
How many are there who believe this now ? unless it be that Luther, clinging 
by 'tooth and nail' to the doctrine of Augustine, should be induced to revive 
this antiquated notion." 

So, calling the attention of the same monk to his own 
order, he exclaims : 

" Into what factions, into how many sects, is the order cut up ! Then what 
tumults, what tragedies arise about little differences in the color or mode of 
girding the monastic habit, or some matter of ceremony, which, if not altogether 
despicable, is, at all events, not so important as to warrant the banishment of 
all charity. How many too there are (and this is the worst of all) who, rely- 
ing on the assurances of their monastic profession, inwardly raise their crests 
so high that they seem to themselves to move in the heavens, and reclining 
among the solar rays, to look down from on high upon the people creeping on 
the ground like ants; looking down thus, not only on the ungodly, but also 
upon all who are without the circle of the enclosure of their order, so that for 
the most part nothing is holy but what they do themselves. . . . They make 
more of those things which appertain to their religious order than of those 
very humble things which are in no way peculiar to them, but entirely common 
to all Christian people, such as the vulgar virtues, faith, hope, charity, the fear 
of Go;l, humility, and others of the kind. Nor, indeed, is this a new thing. 
Nay, it is what Christ long ago denounced to his chosen people. 'Ye make the 
word of God of none effect by your traditions.' . . . There are multitudes 
enough who would be afraid that the devil would come and take them alive to 
hell, if, forsooth, they were to set aside their usual garb, whom nothing can 
move when they are grasping at money ! 



252 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

"Are there only a few, think you, who would deem it a crime to be expiated 
with many tears, if they were to omit a line in their hourly prayers, yet have no 
scruple at all when they profane themselves by the worst and most infamous lies 
... I once knew a man devoted to the religious life, one of that class who would 
now be thought 'most religious/ but, nevertheless, more careless of the pre- 
cepts of God than of monastic rites, slid down from one crime to another, till 
at length he went so far as to meditate the most atrocious of all crimes, a 
crime execrable beyond belief, and one pregnant with manifold guilt, for he 
purposed to add sacrilege to murders and parricide. He associated with him- 
self ruffians and cutpurses, and they committed the most horrible crimes that I 
ever heard of. Just prior to this career of crime, these assassins, ' when they 
came to the private chapel of 'this religious man, they appeased the sacred vir- 
gin by a salutation on their bent knees, and then rose purely and piously to 
perpetrate their crime ! .... I relate this not to defame ail monks with such 
crimes, . . . but because people trust so much to such things (forms of wor- 
ship), that under the very security which they thus feel they give themselves 
up to crime.' 

" Reflecting upon these things, you may learn not to grow too proud of your 
own sect; nothing could be more fatal. 2s or trust in private observances, but 
that you should place your hope rather in the Christian faith, than in your 
(sect) faith, and not trust in those outward things that you can do for yourself, 
but in those which you cannot do without God's help." 

The True Christian Life needs no Ceremonial or 
Sacramental Mediators. 

" You can fast by yourself, you can keep vigils by yourself, you can say 
prayers by yourself — you can do these things by the devil ! But, verily, 
Christian faith, which Christ Jesus truly said to be in spirit; Christian hope, 
which, despairing of its own merits, confides only in the mercy of God; Chris- 
tian charity, which is not puffed up, is not made angry, does not seek its own 
glory— none, indeed, can attain these except by the grace and gracious help 
of God alone. 

"By how much the more you place your trust in those virtues which arc 
common to Christendom, by so much the less will you have faith in private 
ceremonies." 

Well does Seebohm remark, after quoting some passages 
from More where the Papal ritualism was not altogether 
rejected: 

" That these passages prove that More and his friends had not set aside 
monasticism, or even Mariolatry, as altogether wrong, cannot be too clearly 
recognized. In an age of transition, it is the direction of the thoughts and 
aims of men which constitutes the radical difference or agreement between 
them, rather than the exact distance that each may have travelled on the 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 253 

same road. Luther himself had not yet, in his hatred of ceremonies, travelled 
as far as the Oxford Reformers, though in after years he went farther. . . . 
They seemed to meet in their common hatred of the formalism of the monks, 
and in their common attempt to grasp at the spirit — the reality of religion 
through its forms and shadows. And much as Luther's friends might differ 
from some of his statements, and the tone he sometimes adopted, their respect 
for his moral earnestness, and their perception of the amount of exasperation 
to which his hot nature was exposed, made them readily pardon what they 
cjuid not approve." 

THE " UNITED BRETHREN," A. D. 1530. 
Before Luther had come to the conclusion that himself 
was a Hussite, Erasmus had been in correspondence with 
Schlechta, a Bohemian, on the religious dissensions in Bohemia 
and Moravia, with special reference to the Hussite sect of the 
United Brethren. Schlechta had informed Erasmus that 

" Setting aside Jews and unbelieving philosophers, who denied the immor- 
tality of the soul, the people were divided into three sects : First, the Papal 
party, which included most of the magistrates and nobility (like the Church 
of England of a later day) ; Secondly, a party which acknowledged the Papacy 
but differed from other good Catholics in dispensing the sacrament in both 
kinds to the laity, and in chanting in the vulgar (known) tongue; Thirdly, 
the sect of the ' Pyghards,' or ' United Brethren,' who, since the time of John 
Zisca, had maintained their ground through much bloodshed and violence. 
These regarded the Pope and clergy as manifest 'Anti-Christ/ the Pope him- 
self, sometimes as the ' Beast,' and sometimes as the harlot of the Apocalypse. 
They chose ignorant and even married laymen as their priests and bishops. 
They called each other ' brothers and sisters.' They acknowledged no writings 
as of authority but the Old and New Testaments. Fathers and schoolmen 
they counted nothing by. They thought lightly of the sacraments, used no 
salt or holy water in baptism, and rejected extreme unction. They saw only 
simple bread and wine, no divinity, in the sacrament of the altar and regarded 
these only as signs representing and commemorative of the death of Christ, 
who they said was in heaven. The suffrages of the saints, and prayers for the 
dead, they held to be vain and absurd, also auricular confession and penance. 
Vigils and fasts they looked upon as hypocritical. Their priests used no vest- 
ments, and no forms of prayer but the ' Lord's Prayer.' The festivals of the 
Virgin, apostles, and saints, they said were invented by the idle. Other per- 
nicious ! dogmas of theirs, Schlechta thought were not worthy of mention to 
Erasmus ! If, however, he added, the first two of these three sects could be 
united, then, perhaps, this vicious sect, now on the increase, owing to recent 
ecclesiastical scandals, might, by the aid of the king, be either exterminated ! 
or forced into a better form of creed and religion." 



254 EITUALISM DETHKONED. 

Erasmus' reply to Schlechta showed how much of the 
spirit of compromise and of churchly conservatism yet re- 
mained in his mind : 

"You point out [said he to Schlechta] the three sects of Bohemia and 
Moravia ; I wish that some pious hand could unite the three into one!" 

The second party, Erasmus thought, " erred more in scorn- 
fully rejecting the judgment and custom of the Eoman Church 
than in thinkiDg it right to take the eucharist in both kinds, 
which was not an unreasonable practice in itself, (when did 
the Papacy ever pretend to quote the Bible to substantiate 
their ritualism ?) though it might be better to avoid singularity 
on such a point" So conformity is the sole reason for follow- 
ing the Popish priests. 

"As to the ' United Brethren/ he did not see why they should assume that 
the Pope was antichrist because there had been some bad Popes, or that the 
Roman Church was a 'harlot' because she had often had wicked cardinals and 
bishops. Still, however bad the ' United Brethren' might be, he would not. 
advise or resort to violence." 

Thus we see that Erasmus had simply reached the point 
where he could tolerate dissent. 

He could see no blame to be attached to their calling one 
another " brothers and sisters ! " He wished the practice 
could obtain among all Christians, if only the fact were con- 
sistent with the words ! He says : 

" In thinking less highly of the doctors than of the Scriptures they were 
in the right — that is, preferring God to man ; but altogether to reject them (i. e., 
the doctors of divinity) was as bad as altogether to accept them. ... It is im- 
pious to condemn what was instituted, not without good reason, by the 
fathers ! " 

Here we have the sickly reasoning of Church conformity 
and compromise in every age glaring out against all attempts 
to break the yoke of a ritual bondage from the days of the 
apostolic contest with Judaism to the era of dissent from the 
Papacy and Prelacy in England. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 255 

What Erasmus admitted. 

Erasmus admitted that Christ and the apostles officiated in 
their every-day dress, but thought it well to follow the fathers, 
in the wearing of vestments, in his day ; and in regard to ob- 
servances of days, he admitted that the number of festivals had 
become so enormous that the laborer was robbed of his need- 
ful earnings, and that on no days were crimes so frequent as 
on these festival days. 

Erasmus thought that 

" Even many of these might be reconciled to the Church, of Rome if, instead 
of everything being defined, we were content with what is evidently set forth in 
the Scriptures as necessary to salvation ! And these things are/ew in number, 
and the fewer the easier for many to accept ! ' Nowadays/ he says, 'out of one 
article we make six hundred, some of which are such that men might be ignorant 
of them or doubt them without injury to 'piety. It is in human nature to cling 
by ' tooth and nail' to what has once been denned ! ' " 

Erasmus proceeds to define what he deems the essentials of 
faith, thus : 

'• The sum of the philosophy of Christ lies in this, that we should know that 
all our hope is placed in God, who freely gives us all things through his Son 
Jesus; that by his death we are redeemed; that we are united to his body in 
baptism [Erasmus doubtless misconceives the baptism that unites to Christ] ; 
. . . that if adversity comes, we should bear it in the hope of the future reward 
which is in store for all good men . . . thus we should always be progressing 
from virtue to virtue, and, whilst assuming nothing to ourselves, ascribe what is 
good to God. That if there be any one who would inquire into the Divine 
nature, or the nature of Christ, or abstruse points about the sacraments, let him 
do so; only don't let him try to force his views upon others. 

" In the same way as very verbose instruments lead to controversies, so too 
many definitions lead to differences. . . . Let me therefore examine myself, 
whether there be anything in me inconsistent with Christ — whether there be any 
difference between, me and my neighbor. 

"As to the rest, how the same body (of Christ) can exist in so many places at 
once . . . and with what body we rise again, though I do not disapprove of 
these things being inquired into in moderation, yet it conduces very little to 
piety to spend too much labor upon them. Men's minds are diverted by these 
and other innumerable j&fMleties, from things of vital importance. I know 
that the pure blood of Chrisc .. nd his body are to be taken purely by the pure 
as a most sacred sign and pledge both of his love to us and of the fellowship of 
Christians amongst themselves" 



256 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Here Erasmus admits that those who partake worthily of a 
sacrament must first be pure, which on its very face annuls 
the doctrine that the sacrament itself makes the partaker of it 
pure. And his teaching, that it should be taken in the exer- 
cise, and as a proof of brotherly love, establishes the principle 
that that brotherly love (the essence of religion) should pre- 
exist in each individual, thus perpetuating the sign after the 
substance has come ; like keeping the promissory note after 
the debt is cancelled, or the photograph of an individual 
already and all the while present. It should be borne in mind 
that this discussion respecting the non-ritualism of the 
" United Brethren " elicits the fact that Erasmus yet clung to 
all the sacraments of the Papal Church (yet wishing full 
liberty to all that dissented), holding himself, as do both the 
Church of Rome and of England hold, the Church has a 
right to ordain and establish rituals and bind them upon suc- 
ceeding generations simply by Church authority. This doc- 
trine alone can reconcile even the Papists to the unending 
mummeries they connect with the administration of baptism, 
the eucharist and all their other sacraments. They do not 
pretend to be following Jesus Christ nor his apostles in these 
concomitant innovations and contrivances of priestly craft 
and superstition. 

Erasmus argued well for tolerance of different views, and 
blamed Schlechta, in the letter we quote from, not for hold- 
ing the views he does respecting sacraments, but for making 
them a ground of separation from fellow-Christians; and 
also blames him (Schlechta, who was also a dissident from 
Home) for his disposition to persecute and " exterminate " the 
" United Brethren." He also blames the Church for narrow- 
ing her boundaries so as to shut out these ultra-dissenters 
from her communion ; and hints that 

"It would tend greatly to the establishment of concord, if secular princes, 
especially the Roman pontiff, would abstain from all tyranny and avarice. ' For/ 
said he, ' men easily revolt when they see preparations for enslaving them, 
when they see that they are not to be invited to piety, but caught for plunder. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 257 

If they saw that we were innocent, and desirous to do them good, they would 
verily easily accept our faith.'" 

This is very well put. A standard reared whence benevo- 
lence shines forth, with however much of superstition and 
cumbersomeness of ritual even, will draw many earnest and 
inquiring minds, who seek that element of the soul's life, 
good-will, to its lifted banner. Erasmus saw and admitted 
that the scholastic subtleties of theology as taught in the 
Augustinian system could not, by any ecclesiastical authority, 
be settled and established as the creed of the Christian, not- 
withstanding it endured 1400 years. Yet its definitions, 
after the lapse of these years, remained as unsettled as ever, 
and consisted of hypotheses that never could be settled by 
the human reason unless they were utterly rejected. 

But Luther and the Hussites practically assumed that 
someivhere in the Church was an authority capable of estab- 
lishing any hypothesis as a dogma of the Church. In this 
respect the Reformers Luther, "WicklifFe, and Huss were 
behind the Oxford Eeformers, who denied any such Church 
authority (though even they sought conformity in rituals), 
yet contended for freedom of doctrine and worship. And 
this stand taken for freedom of conscience, three hundred and 
fifty years ago, is the germ of the Reformation there and of 
the Protestantism which we now enjoy. 

Its abettors have all along been accused of " free- thinking 
tendencies," and have endured the sneers of the "Orthodox," 
self-styled such, whose only influence was toward conservatism 
and the icy chilliness of a spiritual death, yet endured because 
in the Church, while the energy of an earnest piety and a 
true spiritual life has ever been with the Reformers. 

This record of the Oxford Reformers should not close 
without stating the fact that Colet was still so blinded by his 
relations to the Papacy that he wrote a work, "De Sacramentis 
Ecclesise" — i. e., concerning the sacraments of the Church, in 
which he argues that the Church, mysteriously and mystically, 
comes into marriage or union with Christ in the sacraments 
17 



258 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

(the seven sacraments of Home) as the bride comes into 
union with the husband in actual marriage on earth. He 
bases his argument on Eph. v. 32. Here is a real mysticism, as 
the reader will see — mysticism upon a groundless conceit 
respecting the appointment and virtue of sacraments ; while 
those who rejected sacraments, and taught the need instead 
of a vital union with Christ, through the Holy Spirit, were in 
no proper sense mystics, only as all spiritual knowledge of 
God and of Christ within is a mystery to the unbelieving and 
carnal mind. The power, as distinguished from the form of 
godliness, has ever been with those who have exalted the 
spiritual union above the formal, and even oft to the exclusion 
of the letter of the sacrament or any other rite. 

THE REFORMERS— LUTHER, CARLSTABT, ZWIN- 
GLE, ETC., A. D. 1525-1575. 

Our record has now reached the period of the Reformation 
under the lead of Luther, Zwingle, Melancthon, Carlstadt, 
and others. And, while noting the vast strides of the Re- 
formers from the wilderness of Popery, who is not struck with 
the palpable evidence that very few of the mightiest minds 
even, can attain and grasp all truth, and press forward all 
needed reform in their first effort ? The light of truth shines 
as men can bear the light and receive it. Luther did, in- 
deed, by one !ell swoop dash away four of the seven sacra- 
ments of the Papal Church at the outset. But his deter- 
mination to adhere to the Church of Rome for the purpose of 
reforming her made all further progress in the line of anti- 
sacramentarianism very difficult. 

Luther confesses to having learned much of the 

Mystics. 

Luther read the Mystics, and confesses to having received 

great spiritual profit from their teachings. They confirmed 

him in his disgust for the dry teachings of the schoolmen, in 

his contempt for the works and observances so much trump- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 259 

eted by the Church, and in the conviction of man's need of 
divine help, and in his attachment to the Bible. " I prefer," 
he wrote to Staupitz, " the Mystics and the Bible to all the 
schoolmen." 

Says D'Aubigne, vol. i. p. 213 : 

" Perhaps also the German Theology (a work of the Mystics) aided him in 
forming a sounder idea on the sacraments, and, above all, on the mass. 
Luther republished this work {German Theology), and in the preface declared 
that next to the Bible and St. Augustine, he had never met with a book in 
which he had learned more of God, Christ, man, and of all things !" 

This, he says, mark of the great work of the Mystics. 

rt One would say," continues Luther, " that there had never lived men be- 
fore us who taught as we teach. Yet, in truth, there have been many. But 
the anger of God, which our sins have deserved, has prevented us from seeing 
and hearing them I " 

Luther avowed in full the anti-Church doctrine of the Wal- 
denses and the Catharists, and it is amazing that when he 
preached justification and salvation by faith only, that he did 
not see the utter contradiction there is between salvation by 
faith and salvation by sacraments. But he did not. With 
the Waldenses and others he boldly declared that every 
Christian is a priest — all are " kings and priests to God " — and 
" all have the right to administer the sacraments ! " And still 
making baptism and regeneration synonymous, or at least 
coincident, as had been the great folly of the Papacy, he thus 
makes each human member of this universal priesthood the 
saviour of another, or others, through baptism. True, he 
dwelt largely and glowingly on salvation by faith, but that 
he understood them as coincident may be inferred from his 
insisting, as he does, that all baptized infants are believers, 
and that their faith is born with their baptism. See 
D'Aubigne, vol. ii. p. 123 : 

" Perhaps to what I have said on the necessity of faith, the baptism of 
little children may be objected. But as the word of God is mighty to change 
the heart of a wicked man, who is not less deaf nor less helpless than an in- 
fant, so the prayers of the Church, to which all things are possible, change 



260 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

the little child by the faith it pleases God to place in his heart, and thus puri- 
fies and renews." 

Again, he says : 

"That children themselves believe in baptism, that they have a faith pecu- 
liar to them — what has reason to do with faith and with the word of God f 
Does it not, on the contrary, resist them? No man can attain to faith unless 
he becomes a fool, without reason, without intelligence, and like a little child!" 

Thus it will be seen that Luther's sacramentarian illusion, 
still retained, requires the doctrine that the soul-humiliation, 
which is the real antecedent of faith, should take the mon- 
strous form of absolute dementation, in order that a baptized 
child may be called a true believer. Luther's three sacra- 
ments, Baptism, Penance, and the Lord's Supper, are sustained 
by similar logic. Alluding to baptism, he says : " God has 
preserved this sacrament alone free from human traditions." 
When the reader calls to mind the fact that then, for 1200 
years, the words of Robinson, the great Baptist historian, 
had been true : " Baptism rose pure in the East, it rolled 
westward, diminishing in lustre ; often beclouded by mists, 
and sometimes under a total eclipse, at length it escaped the 
eye, and was lost amid attenuated particles, shades, nonentities, 
and monsters" — he will know how to appreciate Luther's 
effort thus to save the Church idol and arm of strength — 
water-baptism ! 

There was but needed the development and triumph of the 
anti-Jewish moral sense of the Greek word baptizo, in the 
mind of Luther and all former ritualizers, to have saved them 
from such incongruous teachings about the way of salvation. 
Then they would have seen, that like as Christ had meat to eat 
his carnal disciples " knew not of," so his great commission 
referred to a baptism that too ma,ny in all ages have " known 
not of." 

But Luther's most palpable and pertinacious sacramenta- 
rianism was in relation to the Mass or Eucharistic Supper! 
This created and perpetuated an almost lifelong contest be- 
tween Luther and his co-reformers. Many of these co-reform- 



CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 261 

ers seemed to cut loose from the Papacy so far as to see the 
intrinsic worthlessness of all ritual observances ; for they 
taughl that faith could be exercised and salvation received 
without a previous or coincident ritual observance. And if 
so, then surely the ritual had nothing to do with the attain- 
ment of salvation. 

True, the other Reformers generally deemed the eucharist 
useful as a symbol or memorial (but who could tell how ?) — 
yet some, it seems, like the Mystics and most of the previous 
Reformers, were for understanding them only in the spiritual 
sense. This alarmed Luther very much. D'Aubigne, vol. iii. 
p. 159, says, speaking of these spiritualizers : 

" They were not content with undervaluing the external word — i. e., the 
Bible (a false insinuation probably), they went so far as to despise the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as something outward, and to speak of an 
inward communion as the only true communion. From that time, in every 
attempt to explain the doctrine of the Lord's Supper in a symbolical manner, 
Luther saw only the danger of weakening the authority of the Holy Scriptures, 
of substituting arbitrary allegories for their real meaning (just as ritualists 
and adventists of our day tremble when their outwardism is assaulted), of 
spiritualizing everything in religion, ... of substituting, by this means, for 
the true Christianity a mysticism, a theosophy, a fanaticism, that would in- 
fallibly become its grave." 

Thus has every ritualist trembled for the ark when their 
ritualism was assaulted, while history has never verified the 
charge of theosophy or fanaticism against those who have 
regarded the Christian dispensation as a spiritual dispensation 
wholly, while it has ever verified the charge of a fiery, perse- 
cuting, theosophic fanaticism against the ritualists ! 

The Mystics were " God's friends," while the Papal ritualists 
were God's enemies and the enemies of the Church. How 
gratuitous, then, D'Aubigne's after concession : 

" We must acknowledge that, had it not been for Luther's violent opposi- 
tion, the mystical, enthusiastic, and subjective tendency would then perhaps 
have made rapid progress, and would have turned back the tide of blessings 
that the Reformation was to spread over the world." 

Was the " tide of blessings " turned back by the anti-ritual- 
ism of the Mystics three hundred years earlier, or the anti- 



262 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

ritualism of the Catharists six hundred years earlier, or that 
of the " Friends " a hundred years after Luther ? This con- 
ceit, that a half-way reformation from the Papacy was better 
than a whole reformation would have been, is a conceit that has 
neither philosophy nor Christianity for its basis. The bondage 
of Protestant sects to rituals and opinions to this day is witness, 
rather, of the baleful fruits of this superstition, bigotry, and re- 
maining Papal ritualism of Luther. 

Carlstadt's Opposition to Luther's Sacramen- 
tarianism. 
Carlstadt opposed Luther's ritualism most persistently, and 
warred also upon the images of the saints, which the Papists 
had placed in every church and cathedral, which Luther was 
also willing to save, as he wished to diverge from the Papal 
Church as little as possible. Hence, Luther persecuted Carl- 
stadt, and drove him out of the diocese of his jurisdiction, and 
greatly crippled his ministerial influence. Carlstadt main- 
tained that nothing could be more injurious to real piety than 
confidence in outward ceremonies, and in a certain magical 
influence of the sacraments. Well asks D'Aubigne, vol. iii. p. 
157: 

" Did Carlstadt arrive at this opinion unaided ? No; . . . the historic filia- 
tion of the reformed doctrine, so long overlooked, now appears clearly estab- 
lished ; unquestionably we cannot fail to see in this doctrine the sentiments 
of several of the fathers." 

And by D'Aubigne's showing it appears that Luther was at 
first inclined to favor this view, for he writes, in a treatise on 
the mass which appeared in 1520 : 

" I can every day partake of the sacraments, if I only call to mind the 
words and promises of Christ, and if I nourish and strengthen my faith in 
them. 

"D'Aubigne adds, 'It would even appear that the idea frequently occurred 
to him at this period that a symbolical explanation of the Lord's Supper 
would be the most powerful weapon to overturn the Papal system from top to 
bottom.' " 

The spiritualizing view of Carlstadt was received by the 
Swiss Reformers, Zwingle, GEcolampadius, Bucer, Hedio, and 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 263 

others ; while the German Reformers (Wittembergers, as they 
were called), Melancthon, Jonas, Osiandar, Brenz, etc., ad- 
hered to Luther. Zwingle said : 

" The bread and wine are in the eucharist what the water is in baptism. 
It would be in vain to plunge a man a thousand times in water, if he does not 
believe. Faith is the one thing needful." 

Luther, on the other hand, contended that 

" ' Christ had determined to give believers a full assurance of their salva- 
tion/ and had, therefore, ' added his real body to the bread and wine. Just 
as iron and fire, which are, nevertheless, two distinct substances, are confounded 
together in the heated mass of iron, so that in each of its parts there are at once 
iron and fire, in like manner the glorified body of Christ is found in all the 
parts of the bread.' " 

Luther even went so far as to say, " he would rather re- 
ceive the blood only with the Pope, than the wine only with 
Zwingle." So intensely did Luther revolt from the Protestant 
view of Zwingle. 

"The reforming tendency, however, predominated in Zwingle; this was 
directed to two great objects — simplicity of worship and sanctification of life. 
To harmonize the worship with the necessities of the mind that seeks not ex- 
ternal pomp but invisible things — this was Zwingle's first aim. The idea of 
the corporeal presence, in the Lord's Supper, the origin of so many ceremonies 
and superstitions of the Church, must therefore be abolished. He found the 
Roman doctrine of the eucharist, and even that of Luther, presupposed a 
magical influence prejudicial to sanctification ; he feared lest Christians, im- 
agining they received Jesus Christ in the consecrated bread, should thencefor- 
ward less earnestly seek to be united to him by faith in the heart. Faith, he 
said, leads to a real union with Divine things. Thus, it was not a leaning to 
rationalism, but a profoundly religious view, that led him to his peculiar 
doctrines." 

This statement of Zwingle's spiritual view of sacraments is 
precisely similar to that of the anti-ritualists, who find the 
only supper of our Lord in John vi. — in eating by faith " that 
bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the 
world ! " They fear that by a ceremonial eating of outward 
bread they may lose sight of the true spiritual bread, as the 
Jews, by a fleshly circumcision, lost sight of the circumcision 
of the heart. The common arguments used as defences or 



264 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

reasons for these outward observances they conceive to be as 
groundless as if we should ask a promissory bond or parch- 
ment will or sign of a patrimony already received, or should 
ask a tent or booth to dwell in, after the " mansion " is finished. 
They ask, would not a continual concern for the sign or parch- 
ment, now worthless, turn their attention from the inheritance, 
and cause their really losing sight of the kingdom won? 
Sticklers for rituals do thus lose sight of the things those rites 
ostensibly represent. The signs of redemption are valued at 
the cost of love to those redeemed. See the Protestant world 
marred by an inheritance of ritualism, unknown to the Pro- 
testants before the time of Luther. If they ostensibly use 
rites merely as memorials of the Author and Finisher of our 
salvation, they are continually in a contest as to the manner 
and the persons fit to use these memorials. And everywhere, 
in the evangelical churches, those are found the most spiritual 
Avho value them least! We think a candid investigation will 
show this. 

Take the different modern views of the eucharist — that it is 
a pledge of Divine love — that it is an " outward sign of an 
inward grace " — that it is a memorial of the redemptive work 
and sufferings — and these views differ from each other ; or the 
view of Zwingle and John Calvin, the fathers of Presbytenan- 
ism : that in it Christ is spiritually or essentially present, 
though not in body — and does not the idea of being obedient 
to God, by observing an outward rite, or of seeing Christ in 
an emblem, turn faith's eye and duty's eye away from the real 
point of concern respecting moral responsibility and Christian 
duties, and tend to induce a self-satisfied frame of mind in 
those who give no other evidence of piety than in the observ- 
ance of such ceremonies ? True, it may be replied, that if 
proper instruction is connected with the observance of the 
ceremony, it will be a help in impressing moral duty. I 
reply, there is no superstition or ceremonial observance of 
Jew, Greek, Roman, or Protestant, even to the " Ave Maria," 
or the counting of beads, or turning toward Mecca or Jerusa- 



CIIEOXICLES OF THE JSON-BAPTIZEES. 265 

lem to pray, but : .ay be made use of by a spiritual mind, to 
impress moral duty. But that spiritual mind must needs 
continually warn the worshipper, in the use of the rites, not to 
trust in the rites, and even to guard himself from unduly 
trusting in them. And cannot these moral duties be as fully 
and impressively inculcated without this constant temptation 
to a ritual trust? which ritual trust has been the death-knell 
of piety in all ages. Thus it is proven that the external em- 
blem tends to weaken faith in things unseen and spiritual, 
to sectarize the mind, and freeze charity. Did not circumci- 
sion and Judaism generally have this effect? God "found 
fault " with that scheme, " disannulled the commandment 
going before, for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof," 
and now writes his law in our hearts, and works there by his 
Spirit's power — without emblems — by the direct and mighty 
energies of the Holy Ghost. 

And as to a memorial, we need more a memorial of those 
dead and departed from us than of those forever with us: 
" Ye do show forth the Lord's death till he come," says Paul ; 
and Christ explains by saying, " I will no more drink of the 
fruit of the vine, till the kingdom of God be come." To 
those who do not recognize the kingdom of Christ and of 
God as having begun in power in that generation of Jewish 
believers, and to all who receive Christ in full by faith, ac- 
cording to Christ's words of promise, we have naught to say, 
only to quote Christ's words, " We will come and make our 
abode with you ! " and John's, " We know that the Son of God 
has come, and has given us an understanding, and we are in 
him, that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the 
true God and eternal life." Do we need the outward emblem 
when we have " the witness " and the " eternal life " within ? 
or can emblems convert or bring to Christ those that have not 
the witness ? If so, then the doctrine of regeneration and sal- 
vation by baptism and the sacraments is true. Let this mat- 
ter be well pondered. 



2G6 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

ZWINGLE STRENUOUSLY OPPOSES LUTHER'S SACRAMEN- 
TARIANISM. 

Zwingle oft reasons with great force, and in an ud answera- 
ble manner, for the spiritual view, as opposed to sacramen- 
tarianism. Luther having published his " Treatise against the 
Celestial Prophets" — i. e., against the spiritualizes — Zwingle no 
longer hesitated to oppose Luther's teachings boldly. In his 
" Commentary on True and False Heligion" he says : 

" Since Christ, in the 6th chapter of St. John, ascribes to faith the power 
of imparting eternal life, and of uniting the believer to him in the closest 
union, what need have toe of more? Why should he afterwards have ascribed 
this virtue to his flesh, whilst he himself declares that his flesh profiteth 
nothing ? The flesh of Christ, so far as it suffered death for us, is of incalcu- 
lable utility, for it saves us from perdition; so far as it is eaten by us, it is of 
no use whatevor." — D'Aubigne, vol. iii. p. 302. 

But the ritualists reasoned thus : Brenz, assuming the task 
of defending Luther, frames this apology : 

"If an emperor give a wand to a judge, saying: 'Take; this is the power 
of judging; ' the wand, no doubt, is a mere sign ; but the words being added, 
the judge has not only the symbol, but the power itself." 

This reasoning was received in Germany with acclamation ; 
but its utter fallacy is seen by considering the case, thus : that 
though an emperor might give a wand at the very moment 
he gave authority to a judge, and the wand was ever to be the 
symbol thereof, yet Christ does not give spiritual life and 
power in connection with sacraments, or at least has made no 
such promise ; therefore the analogy falls to the ground. 

Zwingle also attacked the sentiment that what one person, 
consecrate or un consecrate, could do for another, could be of 
any saving efficacy. Speaking of the mass, Zwingle says, p. 
234: 

" My brethren in Christ . . . our only aim is to show that the mass is not a 
sacrifice that one man may offer to God for another, unless any one should 
maintain also that a man can eat and drink for his friend. Another adds, in 
Zwingle's behalf, 'Let us teach Christians to receive Christ in their hearts/ 



CHRONICLES OF THE XOX-BAPTLZERS. 267 

' Thus/ says D'Aubigne, ' was the reform carried on in Zurich' (where Zwingle 
dwelt) and in all Switzerland. The words of Jesus Christ were once more 
spirit and life." 

And mark what follows, p. 256 : 

" While the different orders and parties in the Church of Rome were in- 
cessantly disputing among themselves, the first effect of the gospel was to re- 
store charity among the brethren. The love of the first ages was then revived 
in Christendom. ' Peace dwells in our city/ exclaimed Zwingle; 'among us 
there is no fraud, no dissension, no envying, no strife. Whence can proceed 
such harmony, except from the Lord, and that the doctrine we preach inclines 
us to innocence and peace ? ' " 

Thus it appears that in connection with Zwingle's spiritual 
preaching there was a great revival of God's work in Switzer- 
land, resulting also in great harmony and fellowship among 
the saints, and doubtless in the conversion to God of many 
before unconverted. And while the Spirit of God was with 
them, they maintained that unity of spirit ; for D'Aubigne adds, 
"Charity and unity prevailed, although there was no uni- 
formity." And then, also, free discussion was tolerated, for 
Zwingle called in question the Augustinian doctrine of origi- 
nal sin, which had ruled the Papal Church for ages, and had 
been the basis of their teaching respecting baptismal regenera- 
tion. Zwingle gave the name simply of disease to original 
corruption, and reserved the term sin for the actual transgres- 
sion of the law. These teachings caused discussions, but " not 
a cessation of brotherly love," says D'Aubigne. So Zwingle 
continued the observance of what he termed "the Lord's 
Supper," but having divested it of its chief Papal features, 
and claiming to observe it simply as a memorial of Christ, it 
did not, while the life of Christ was in them, mar their fellow- 
ship, or blind their spiritual eye. 

Nor could Zwingle escape wholly from the Judaistic observ- 
ance of infant baptism. 

In a public discussion upon the subject at Zurich, Zwingle 
and his friends maintained the following theses : 



268 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 



Zwingle's False Theses Publicly Maintained. 

" 1. Children born of believing parents are children of God, like those born 
under the Old Testament, and consequently may receive baptitm. 

" 2. Baptism under the New Testament is what circumcision was under the 
Old ; consequently, baptism ought now to be administered to children, as cir- 
cumcision was formerly. 

'• 3. We cannot prove the custom of rebaptizing, either by examples, texts, 
or arguments drawn from Scripture; and those who are rebaptized crucify 
Jesus Christ afresh." 

Now the marvellous assumptions of the foregoing theses, 
since Zwingle claimed to be neither a Jew nor a Papist, were 
these : 

1. That the children born of Jewish parents were, therefore, 
children of God, in accordance with the Jewish delusion that 
sonship to God was attained by natural generation — i. e., in 
being the children of Abraham after the flesh — the great error 
that Paul and all the apostles continually refuted. 

2. That Christ had placed baptism in the Christian Church 
in the place of circumcision in the Jewish Church, when no 
word of that import is found in the New Testament, and bap- 
tism and circumcision both were retained by the Judaizers in 
the Christian Church for not less than two centuries after 
Christ. 

3. While it is true that re-baptizing as a mark of conversion 
or proselytism was not provable from Scripture, nor was bap- 
tism itself of those born of believing parents, yet re-baptizing 
was no more " crucifying Christ afresh " than was the first 
baptism ; either was but at the behest of a Jewish law, a seek- 
ing to " begin " wholly " in the flesh," or, " having begun in the 
spirit," a seeking to be "made perfect by the flesh." 

And the two former theses, it will be seen, were based upon 
or traced to Jewish custom or law, and not upon any New 
Testament law. Nor was the third thesis traceable to any 
law ! Thus we see how easy it is even for reformers to teach 
for doctrines the commandments of men ! 

And thus are we also introduced to Zwingle's inconsistencies 



CHEONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEBS. 269 

of doctrinal teaching: at one time making faith in Christ all in 
all for salvation, and the way of escape from the Papacy, and 
then turning toward a legal perpetuation of a ritual observ- 
ance where no law can be found. 

Luther equally Inconsistent. 

Luther is equally inconsistent with himself. In his doctrine 
of justification by faith, he seems to have renounced the Papal 
doctrine of salvation through the sacraments. But in words 
only did he renounce it. In words only did he renounce the 
Papal doctrine of transubstantiation ; he changed it simply for 
the equally absurd doctrine of the immanence of Christ's 
glorified body. To get rid of the theory of a repeated miracle 
every time a priest or administrator should say the words of 
consecration over the bread and wine in the eucharist, by 
which, as Rome taught, they were instantly converted into 
the body and blood of Jesus Christ, for that time only, " he 
substituted the universal miracle .... of the ubiquity and 
omnipresence of the body of Christ. Christ is present in the 
bread and wine," said Luther, " because he is present every- 
where, and, above all, wherever he wills to be." Yet, in his 
contest with Zwingle on the subject, he asserts in self-contra- 
diction, " He is present, not as in a place ! " Yet the elements, 
he insisted, were the real body and blood of Christ, and by 
eating and drinking we are really made partakers of Christ. 

Thus it is seen, not as a new discovery, that it is more thar 
human for any man to be entirely self-consistent. Yet even 
Luther's partial reform, in denying the supremacy of the 
Pope, and the exclusive sacerdotal authority of Romish 
priests, in giving the cup as well as the bread to the laity, and 
in teaching that faith was also necessary in order that the 
sacraments might be of saving efficacy, greatly alarmed the 
priests and minions of the Papacy " God is blasphemed," 
they said ; " the sacraments, the mother of God, and the saints 
are despised." And this because the Reformers continually 
appealed to the Scriptures and not to the Pope for " instruc- 



270 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

tion in the way of life." " Convince us by the Holy Scrip- 
tures," demanded the Reformers everywhere. 

Thus was laid the foundation for all future advance in the 
light of truth, until not on'y sacramentarian errors but all 
other errors should be dishevelled from the Church in thei** 
turn. But Luther's obstinacy was a continual check lo 
Zwingle's radicalism in reform. Zvvingle continually sought 
to prove that the Lord's Supper was only emblematical of that 
spiritual eating of Christ's body which is by faith, and which 
alone is saving. Zwingle dreaded a conflict with Luther on 
these subjects lest it might produce a rupture (for it is in con- 
flicts respecting the shell and not the kernel that ruptures are 
most likely to come), and Zwingle's fears were not groundless, 
for not only did that noted council called by Philip, prince 
of Hesse, recorded in D'Aubigne, vol. iv. pp. 76-100, end in 
coldness and almost a rupture between the Swiss and German 
reformers, but it has resulted in the permanency of a High 
Church Lutheranism, with its sacramentarian creed differing 
little from Popery, to this day, while the Protestant successors 
of Zwingle have branched off in a hundred sects, built upon 
ritualism in its more or less palpable or disguised features. 

The Reformers of the fifteenth century could not rid them- 
selves of the superstitious conception of the real presence of 
Christ in sacraments ; they only contested whether the " union 
of Christ with the sacraments was effected by the faith of the 
communicant, or by the opus operatum of the priest ! " 

Hence from the moment that Luther rejected the mystic 
spiritual interpretation of these things they were only on the 
way out of the sacramentarian wilderness of Popery, and by 
no means in true spiritual freedom and light. They were in the 
bondage of the letter in many respects, and not in the 
" liberty " of Christ. Like the Jewish Levitically educated dis- 
ciples of Christ, who, when Christ warned them to " beware of 
the leaven of the Pharisees," could only see the carnal bread 
for man's dying body in the warning, so these reformers, and 
many in our da}', only see outward bread, and fcnts or pools 
of water, in the eating of Christ and the baptism he enjoins. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NOX-BAPTIZERS. 271" 

Luther's extreme conservatism on these subjects has left a 
grievous legacy of ritualism to his succeeding co-religionists, 
filling those nations where Lutheranism still reigns with 
Rationalism, Ritualism, and cold formalism, based on a specu- 
lative philosophy and the Church creed, to a very lamentable 
extent. Luther's purpose, "never to depart from the doctrines 
and customs of the Church (of Rome), except when the lan- 
guage of Scripture rendered it necessary," was tantamount to 
elevating every ceremony of a Jewish or apostate Romish 
Church, with all its mummeries, into a law, if not expressly 
forbidden by Scripture. Carlstadt inquires of Luther, 
"Where has Christ commanded us to elevate the host?" 
alluding to the Romish custom of elevating the wafer ere its 
distribution. " And where has Christ forbidden it ? " was 
Luther's reply. Who does not see that such a plea leaves 
the Church a prey to every puerile ritualistic innovation 
that Christless and dramatic priests might see fit to intro- 
duce? 

And in concluding this presentation of the conflicts of the 
ritualistic and anti-ritualistic tendencies in the Reformation 
of the fifteenth century, we cannot but trace the result of 
Luther's committal to his conservative and semi-ritual position 
on his own heart and mind. As usual, it created the same 
uncharitableness in him as in others, thus evidently grieving 
the Spirit of God to his own hurt. With uncharitable haste 
he would ascribe the opinions of others that differed from him 
to " the wickedness of their heart*, or the wiles of the devil.' , 
" One or the other of us must be ministers of Satan, the Swiss 
or ourselves," said he of Zwingle and his coadjutors in 
Switzerland. " Opposition roused a sort of frenzy in Luther's 
mind," says D'Aubigne, "»and these frenzies were followed by 
exhaustion." His health was affected by them ; one day he 
fainted in the arms of his wife and friends, and was a whole 
week as if in death and hell. " He had lost Jesus Christ," he 
said, "and was tossed to and fro by the tempests of despair ! " 
This was just at the close of one of his fierce debates with the 



272 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Swiss Reformers respecting the Lord's Supper. "Was it the 
fruit of the spirit of life and love from God, through the Holy 
Ghost, that affected the mind of Luther ? Let the Eternal 
Judge decide. 

We must haste to the last great anti-ritualistic movement 
in the Church of Christ, which has extended even to our day, 
and which commenced in a great revival of God's work in the 
seventeenth century, through a people calling themselves the 

SOCIETY OF FRIEETDS, A. D. 1625-1875. 

This society, generally known by the term Quakers, is a 
protest in the midst of a protest, " a wheel within a wheel," a 
reformation of a reformation — i. e.,to complete a reformation. 
It embodies the last great protest against ritualism that the 
Church of Christ has witnessed, having commenced a little 
over a century later than the Reformation under Martin 
Luther (i. e., about A. d. 1625), and continued to the present 
time. It has done a great work, looking toward purifying the 
Christian Church of exotics, and a ritual and formal type of 
religion, but not all that needs to be done in that direction. 
Its mission is, therefore, not yet ended. George Fox, the 
leader in this work, found even the Protesting Churches of 
England with a " form of godliness " merely, to an alarming 
extent, while the spirit of the Reformation, as seen in Luther's 
time, had too extensively passed away. This was especially 
true respecting the Church of England, which was merely a 
national Church, dissevered from the Papal by the spleen and 
rivalry of the lascivious King Henry VIII., in revenge for 
the Pope's withstanding his purposes of divorce and re- 
marriage. True many of the early Reformers that adhered 
to that Church, as Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, and others, 
were devout and truly pious men ; and many dissenting 
bodies had maintained to a large extent the spirit of the 
Reformation ; which Reformation itself, however, as we have 
seen, did not cast off the ritualistic element, but mainly 
through Luther's churchly tendencies, and obstinate sacra- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NOST-BAPTIZERS. 273 

mentarian ideas, was turned into a channel where the ritual- 
istic element was circumscribed, to be sure, but still retained 
to a very dangerous extent. The Puritan dissenters who had 
preceded the era of George Fox, or were cotemporary with 
him, had eliminated some of the incumbent ritualism of the 
Church of England, and had rejected the principle that the 
State could be the proper head and lawgiver of the Church, 
but they were not prepared to plant themselves on the princi- 
ple that the Church of Christ was wholly spiritual, without 
the adjunct or deformity of a ritual law, nor were they pre- 
pared to suffer for their opposition to the worldly spirit, and 
worldly customs, and State authority over the Church, as the 
Society of Friends appeared to be. True, great numbers of 
them suffered, not imprisonment perhaps, as a general fact, 
like the Friends, but thousands of their ministers suffered 
ejectment from their parishes and churches, and ministers and 
people fled from the country, first to Holland, and then to 
America, to find an asylum where they might enjoy religious 
freedom, and not be compelled to sustain a Church to which 
they could not in conscience conform.* But the Society of 
Friends went to the full extent of refusing to pay tithes, or to 
conform to popular customs, even in the presence of kings and 
nobles, and rebuked priestcraft and the claims of a false hier- 
archy everywhere. In the language of an epistle read before 
a theological class (at Oberlin) more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury ago, we may without detraction of any say, " The martyr 
spirit was passing away. The apostolical zeal of the first re- 
formers was declining. The moral sunlight that in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries broke forth upon the earth, 
so long shrouded in midnight, was become dim. The form of 
godliness was being substituted for its power. The spirit of 
God moved upon the hearts of a few. They saw the apostasy 

* This was true especially of the Brownists and Independents, 'who, in many 
respects, resembled the Society of Friends respecting the true ministry and the 
true Church, and are the pioneers of the Congregational Church of the present 
day. 

IS 



274 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

of Zion. They saw the tide of desolation coming. They 
were willing to be led by the Spirit of the Most Holy. They 
were willing to stand in the breach at such an awful hour. 
But of whom do I speak ? Quakerism (with but little quali- 
fication) may be said to have been but another name for the 
pure light of Christianity in the seventeenth century. ... It 
is not in man to gain all truth by one advance step — from 
frozen climes to reach the equator by a single stride ! Nor 
does noonday burst upon the earth from deep midnight by one 
gleam of sunlight." 

Moreover, in human progress, sometimes reactions occur. 
The Protestants from Romanism retained much of the lumber 
and superstition of Popery, and seem at length (in the Estab- 
lished Church) to be relapsing into Popish formality and im- 
purity. And even the Puritans having, for a short season, 
shared the disaster of being an established Church, were 
elated, became bigoted also — persecuted all dissent (except 
under Cromwell) till vital godliness seemed expiring, and a 
bold, defiant infidelity about to deluge the land. Power is 
not wisdom, but oft beguiles those, that before its possession 
appeared wise, far away from all that is wise or amiable. 

About this time the Spirit of God moved upon the mind of 
George Fox, and a few kindred spirits, who, witnessing the 
fearful declension of the Church, the fearful licentiousness 
of the Court and officers of government, the desecration of 
the Sabbath by every species of gaming, sporting, and pro- 
fanity, and that sanctioned by the royal authority, and the 
manifest disposition of bishop, priest, and king to tolerate 
anything but godliness in the Church and in society, were 
constrained to cry out in language of stern rebuke and remon- 
strance, and in their practice to witness against the general 
demoralization. 

COTEMPOEAEY DEMORALIZATION OF SOCIETY. 

Indeed, so great was the general demoralization in the reigns of James 
I. and Charles I., that the writers we have oft quoted — William and 
Thomas Evans — in introduction to " Friends' Library," say : " Many of 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 275 

the clergy of the Established Church had become corrupt and licentious ; 
they seldom preached ; neglected their congregations and places of wor- 
ship ; and were engaged in practices, not only unbecoming the sacred 
character, but in some cases even scandalously immoral. They encouraged 
rather than repressed the licentiousness of the times ; and seemed much 
more addicted to mirth and amusements than to the duties of the minis- 
terial office. King James drew up a royal declaration, stating that ' for 
the people's recreation, his majesty's pleasure was, that after the end of 
divine service they should not be disturbed, hindered, or discouraged 
from any lawful recreations, such as dancing of men or women, archery, 
leaping, vaulting; nor from having May games, whitsonales, morris- 
dances, setting up May-poles, etc. As might have been expected from 
such royal permission, the sports degenerated into noisy and tumultuous 
revels, with tippling, quarrels, and sometimes even murder." * 

In the reigns of Charles I. and. II. the case was no better. In 1640, a 
hundred of the clergy of the Established Church were tried by order 
of Parliament, for scandalous offences charged against them, and eighty 
of them were convicted. When the disorders that grew out of the royal 
indulgences, and from the vicious example of the ministers of the Es- 
tablished Church, became so great that they seemed unendurable, the 
justices in some of the counties petitioned the judges to suppress these 
disorders, which they did. But Archbishop Laud, then Primate of Eng- 
land, summoned the judges before the king and council, and a sharp 
reprimand, and an order to revoke the prohibition, was the result. The 
archbishop was informed by the bishop of Bath and Wells, where the 
prohibition had been enforced, that the restoration of the wakes and 
revels would be very acceptable to the gentry, clergy, and common peo- 
ple ; in proof of which he had procured the signatures of seventy -two 
clergymen, and believed if he had sent for a hundred more he could 
have had the consent of them all. Such was the state of morals in the 
court and Church and the nation when the Puritans and Friends arose 
to rebuke it. 

Perhaps more than any others George Fox and William Penn 
reached the ears of king and government ; and being in no case political 
partisans they exhorted to a reform of the laws in this wise : George 

* In the reign of Charles II. the court was devoted to licentious pleasures, 
while religion and religious things were made a mere laughing-stock. The 
restoration opened the very flood-gates of vice and wickedness. Says Bishop 
Burnet, "A spirit of extravagant joy spread over the nation that brought in 
with it the throwing off the very profession of virtue and piety; all ended in 
entertainments and drunkenness which overrun the three kingdoms to such a 
degree that it very much corrupted all their morals. . . . The Friends re- 
minded the king of the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and so contrary were 
their example and precept to the prevailing corruptions, and so plain and 
fearless the rebukes they administered, that they were subjected to much abuse, 
yet were they oft instrumental in turning sinners from the evil of their ways. 
Friends went to the courts of justice and exhorted the officers to the discharge 
of their duties, and preached against the prevailing licentiousness in the 
markets and places of public entertainment." 



276 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Fox, being deeply affected with these immoralities, said : ' Let all the 
laws of England be brought into a known tongue ! ' 

" ' Let no swearer, nor curser, nor drunkard bear any office whatever, 
nor be put in any place of trust.' 

" ' Let none keep ale-houses or taverns but those who fear God — that 
will not let the creatures of God be destroyed by drunkenness.' 

" ' Let no man keep an ale-house or tavern that keeps bowls, shuffle- 
boards, or fiddlers, or dice, or cards.' 

" ' Let neither beggar, nor blind people, nor fatherless, nor widows, nor 
cripples, go begging up and down the streets ; but a house be provided for 
them all, and also meat, that there may be never a beggar among you.' 

" ' Let all the wearing of gold lace and costly attire be ended, and 
clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, with the superfluity ; and turn not 
your ear away from the cry of the poor.' 

" George Fox adds : ' I was under great suffering of spirit because of 
the sanguinary character of the penal code of Great Britain, specially 
concerning their putting to death for small matters, and reminding the 
rulers that it was contrary to the law of God in old time, as well as to 
the benign spirit of the gospel.' He urges to amend the laws, thus : ' Let 
no one be put to death for stealing cattle, or money, or any outward 
thing; but let them restore, and mind the law of God — which is equity 
and measureable to the offence.' 

" ' Let none be jailors that are drunkards, swearers, or oppressors of 
the people, but such as may be good examples to the prisoners.' 

"'Let none lie long in jail, for that is the way to spoil the people, and 
to make more thieves, for there they learn wickedness together.' 

" ' Let all jails be in wholesome places, that the prisoners may not lie 
in the filth and straw, like chaff, etc.' 

" Respecting certain nuisances, he said : 

" ' Let these things be mended.' 

" He enjoined masters to train their negroes in the fear of God, and 
after certain years of servitude to set them free. And all Friends he ex- 
horted to instruct and teach the Indians and negroes that Christ, by the 
grace of God, tasted death for every man.* 

Thus he showed the benevolence of his spirit, his love of ' peace on 
earth,' his 'good-will to men,' and in times of persecution his good-will 
even to enemies. Thus the Friends earned their chosen appellation, 
and their known character as peacemakers. What George Fox thus 
inculcated by precept, William Penn, in America, illustrated in practice, 

* This concern for the welfare of the African slaves was ever retained by the 
Friends, and induced their universal cooperation with Wilberforce and Clark- 
son, in the suppression of the slave-trade. Also, in their overleaping the 
boundary liues of the denomination, in the case of an appeal made to them in 
behalf of the Oberlin College (Congregational), in 1838. This university in 
Ohio, having opened its doors to rich and poor of all nations and colors, and 
both sexes, became embarrassed in its finances, in consequence of popular 
prejudices and commercial revulsions in America; hence, an embassy, con- 
sisting of Rev. John Keep and William Dawes, Trustees of Oberlin, was sent 
to England, who raised about $30,000 in aid of the institution, in a few 
months, chiefly contributed by the Society of Friends. 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 277 

in his colony in Pennsylvania. They have ever opposed war and op- 
pression, and have exerted a mighty influence in more than one nation 
in promoting peace, securing the amelioration of the condition of 
prisoners and the oppressed, and the exercise of the spirit of philan- 
thropy and Christian love everywhere. 

Thus have they shown, moreover, that in rejecting a ceremonial law 
they have the more effectually established the moral law. They have 
shoAvn that their peculiar mode of preaching holiness, or the higher 
Christian life, has been justified by their practice thereof, in the face of 
all Christendom, and of a frowning world. 

And Eichard Baxter, no great friend of the Quakers, testifies that 
what they suffered at the hands of wicked rulers had a great tendency, 
through their constancy, patience, and offering themselves as substitutes, 
in suffering, one for another, in changing the mind of the government 
toward them and others. He says, ' The Quakers did greatly relieve 
the sober people for a time, for they were so resolute and so gloried in 
their constancy and sufferings, as they were dragged daily to the com- 
mon jail, yet desisted not — but the rest came the next day — abundance 
of them died in prison, and yet they continue their assemblies still.' 

Orme, the biographer of Baxter, also remarks: 'Had there been 
more of the same determined spirit among others, which the Friends 
displayed, the sufferings of all parties would sooner have come to an 
end. . . . The conduct of the Quakers was infinitely to their honor. 
In withstanding the interferences of government with the rights of con- 
science, by which they finally secured those privileges they so richly 
deserved to enjoy, their heroic and persevering conduct entitles them to 
the veneration of all the friends of civil and religious freedom.'" 

These sufferings for your enfranchisement, Christian reader, 
they endured through a period of thirty years. 

They aimed ever to manifest their consistency by a rigidly 
consistent example. Indeed, such must have been the firmness 
and enthusiasm of these devoted and persecuted witnesses to 
the self-denying principles of the gospel, that it were not to 
be wondered at if, at times, their zeal was not according to 
the highest wisdom, and lead them into certain extremes of 
action which a less lax state of society respecting morals 
would not have required. That long perversion of the gospel 
and its institutions, and grievous abuses of sacred functions, 
may require bold and unaccustomed forms of rebuke, is un- 
deniable, and also a total disuse of what otherwise might have 
been admissible. Nevertheless, that the real principles and 
practices of the primitive Quakers did approach exceedingly 
near the gospel standard, perhaps nearer than any cotemporary 
religious reformers, there seems to be no room to question. 



278 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

God was truly with them in mighty power, and this mighty 
power of truth and of life, from God working within them, 
as the power working within the earth causes the earth to 
quake and tremble, and as they called on the obdurately wicked 
at times to tremble before God, they at length gained the 
appellation of Quakers or Tremblers — a name given them in 
derision, but really indicative of the highest honor conferred 
on them by God himself. 

God set his seal upon their labors in a most marked man- 
ner, so that not only were numbers brought to confess to the 
truth in the face of great obloquy and reproach, but also to 
the enabling of them to endure the loss, oft, of all that earth 
calls dear ; and in stripes, in imprisonments, in confiscation 
of goods, in barbarous treatment at the hands of petty officers 
of government, and a surrounding host of petty spies and 
informers, watching to detect them in some act of violation 
of the infamous conformity laws, that they might pounce 
upon and make a prey of them, they stood firm, and endured 
with meekness all this; and triumphed ultimately over the 
foes of God and man by longsuffering and patience. 

Yes, they gained the Christian signet through suffering and 
martyrdom, enduring with such fortitude and meekness their 
afflictions, that in due time the civil powers became ashamed 
of their conduct in persecuting the inoffensive, who were 
ready to suffer for conscience sake, and were ready to relax 
the rigor of those laws requiring such persecution, and were 
ready to annul them long before the clergy and bishops would 
consent. Thus was the Protestant cause in England (and 
also in America) dishonored by a spirit of bigotry and perse- 
cution, on the part of Protestants, which what themselves had 
suffered at the hands of the Papacy should long before have 
cured. But their longsuffering triumphed even over church 
prejudices, and the bigotry of sectarians ; for they were found 
ever as ready to plead for tolerance and lenity toward others 
who were suffering for conscience sake as for themselves. 
William Penn, one of their number, gained great influence at 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-RA.PTIZERS. 279 

court, and through his intercessions very many were set at 
liberty from long imprisonment, both of Quakers and the 
Puritans. And to their influence, as much as to any other 
cause, is to be attributed the ultimate decline of the spirit of 
persecution for conscience sake. 

Their Views of the Christian Life. 
As we said in the former part of this record of anti-ritual- 
ism, nearly or quite all the anti-ritualists have held to the 
moral standard of completeness in the Christian life — that 
Christian perfection, or entire sanctification of body, soul and 
spirit, commenced by entire consecration to Christ, and his 
work of purity, love, and mercy, was the proper work of the 
true Christian. This has been emphatically true of all the 
preceding ages, and is no less exemplified in the history of the 
Society of Friends. Its origin was not so much in a conten- 
tion respecting theological tenets, as in an effort to promote 
spiritual holiness, to be made manifest in heart and life. 
Hence those doctrines and usages which they saw were work- 
ing practical mischief they discarded as anti-Christian, and 
taking the practical precepts of Christianity, and the law of 
love, as their creed, they based their scheme upon these. In* 
deed, while reading their writings, especially the accounts of 
the religious life and teachings of their members, we have 
been most forcibly impressed with the evidence that herein 
was manifest a great revival of God's work in the century in 
which they arose, and have been as forcibly struck with the 
likeness to the great work in the days of Tauler, four hundred 
years earlier, and also its likeness to the great work of God in 
the days of AVesley and Whitefield, a hundred years later, and 
also its likeness to the work of God as promoted by the re- 
vivalists, Edwards, Finney, and others, two hundred years 
after the rise of the Quakers. Wesley and Finney taught the 
same doctrine of full salvation, or the perfectibility of the 
Christian character through Christ, and were likewise instru- 
mental in the promotion of a general revival of spiritual holi- 



280 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

ness in the churches of Christ. They differed from George 
Fox and his coadjutors in that they did not so fully eschew 
the ritualisms of the churches. Yet these (Wesley and Fin- 
ney), of course, could not accomplish their work without turn- 
ing the attention of all they addressed away from the form to 
the substance of the life in Christ, and they succeeded only as 
they weaned sectarists and formalists from their trust in the 
shadow, and induced them to seek the true spiritual life of 
faith and obedience to the moral rather than the ceremonial 
law. That the Friends may truly be compared to Tauler, 
Wesley, and Finney, in inculcating this inward life of fellow- 
ship with God, and a moral likeness to Christ, we will quote 
from "Introductory Remarks" to a memoir of George Fox (a 
work published in England), to show. On page 54 the writer 
says: 

"Many of them (i. e., the Friends) were persons who had been highly 
esteemed for their piety in the societies with which they had formerly been 
connected, and several of them had been preachers. In the progress of their 
religious experience they were convinced that they had been resting too much 
on a bare belief of what Christ had done and suffered for them when person- 
ally on earth, and also in the ceremonies of religion, without pressing after 
the knowledge of ' Christ, in them the hope of glory/ to feci his righteous 
government set up in their hearts, and the power of the Holy Spirit giving 
them the victory over sin in all its motions, and qualifying them to serve God 
in 'newness of life.' They saw that the Holy Scriptures held up to the view 
of Christians a state of religious advancement and stability far beyond that 
which most of the professors of their day appeared to aim at or admit; a 
state in which sin was to have no more dominion over them, because the law 
of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had set them free from the law of sin and 
death. That this was an inward work, not effected by the bare assent of the 
understanding to the blessed truths contained in the Bible, hearing sermons, 
sprinkling or dipping in water, or partaking of bread and wine, but a real 
change of the heart and affections by the power of the Holy Ghost inwardly 
revealed, regenerating the soul, creating it new in Christ Jesus, and making 
all things pertaining to it of God." 

Here we have a reply, in verity, to those bigoted and super- 
stitious ritualists who cry out, antinomianism, or broad church, 
against those who set aside a ritual law, and thus are ready to 
embrace in their fold all who truly love God, and really intend 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 281 

to obey the moral law, let ceremonies go where they will ! for 
what is the avail of an excellent moral law, highly eulogized, 
to be sure, and looked at with admiration, but never kept, nor 
expected to be ? Is not that the real essence of antinomian- 
ism ? And will God accept your ritual obedience in place of 
the moral ? That is the very essential delusion of both Juda- 
ism aud Popery! And " if the uncircumcision " (the non- 
ritualists) keep the righteousness of the moral law, is not that 
all that God requires f To what purpose was a ritual ever 
appointed but to that end ? And if the ritual itself became 
the end, in man's eye, shall not the ritual be " blotted out," 
that the true end of all dispensations, and all worship, and all 
seeking unto God, may be seen, viz., to secure obedience to the 
moral law, even love to God and our neighbor ? 

But let me quote again, and this time from the memoir of 
George Fox, as found in the " Friends' Library " (vol. i. p. 
30) : speaking of Fox, the writer says : 

" The success accompanying his ministry was great, and the report of his 
piety and zeal having spread far, many came from different parts of the coun 
try to see and converse with him on religious subjects. . . . Others were exas- 
perated at the reception which his doctrine met with. They could not endure 
to hear of perfection, and living a holy and sinless life; and began to plead 
for sin and imperfection, by which the tender convictions and attractions of the 
spirit of grace are quenched ! ' Of all the sects in Christendom/ says George 
Fox, at this time, ' I found none who could bear to be told that any should 
come to Adam's perfection ; into that image of God, that righteousness and 
holiness that Adam was in before he fell ; to be pure and clean, without sin, as 
he was.' Therefore, how should they bear to be told that any should grow up 
to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when they cannot bear 
to hear that any should come, while on earth, into the same power and spirit 
that the prophets and apostles were in ? " 

If this testimony of George Fox be correct, we see where 
the true testimony for Christ and against sin was found in that 
age ; consequently where the true and living Church was. 
God's witnesses and hidden ones have never been wholly ban- 
ished from the earth since the day of our Lord's ascension to 
glory, and " receiving gifts for men ! " Again, George Fox, 
in describing his commission as a minister, says : 



282 RITUALISM DETHHONED. 

"He was sent to turn people from darkness to light, to the grace of God, 
and to the truth in the heart which came by Jesus, that all might come to know 
their salvation nigh ! I saw that Christ died for all men ; was a propiti- 
ation for all, and that the manifestation of the Spirit of God was given to 
every man to profit withal. These things I did not see by the help of man, 
nor by the letter, though they are written in the letter, but I saw them in the 
light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by his immediate spirit and power, as did 
the holy men of God, by whom the Holy Scriptures were written. Yet I had 
no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures : they were very precious to me. ... I 
could speak much of these things and many volumes might be written, but all 
would prove too short to set forth the infinite love, wisdom, and power of God, 
in preparing, fitting, and furnishing me for the service he had appointed me 
to : letting me see the depths of Satan on the one hand, and opening to me on 
the other hand the divine mysteries of his own everlasting kingdom." 

Thus the reader may see how, through the searchings and 
teachings of the Divine Spirit, this eminent servant of God 
was enabled to " comprehend with all saints the length and 
breadth and depth and height of the love of Christ ; and to 
be led according to the apostle's (Paul's) prayer into all the 
fulness of God ! " But, says the writer we have just cited, 

'•'As the nature of his principles was opposed to the outward and lifeless pro- 
fession of religion, which too much prevailed in that day, tending to draw the 
people from a dependence on human teaching and external ceremonies to the 
work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit in their own hearts, he met with much 
opposition and cruel usage. His first imprisonment took place in 1648, at 
Nottingham, where he entered a place of public worship on a First Day morn- 
ing and spoke to the people on the subject of the Holy Scriptures, showing 
that the Spirit of Christ, by which the holy men of old wrote the Scriptures, was 
that by which only they could be rightly understood. As he was speaking the 
officers arrested him, and took him to a filthy prison, where he was detained 
until the sheriff, taking compassion on his uncomfortable situation, removed 
him to his own house. How long he remained there does not appear, but he 
says it was 'a pretty long time/ and after that, being discharged, he travelled 
as before in the work of the ministry. At Mansfield, in 3 649, he entered the 
place of public worship, and attempted to speak to the people, but they fell 
upon him and cruelly beat him with their hands, Bibles, and sticks ; then put 
him into the stocks, where he remained some time, and finally stoned him out 
of the town. ... In the year 1650 he visited Derby and preached to the 
people, for which the officers arrested him and took him before the magistrates, 
who, after an examination of eight hours' length, committed him and John 
Pretwell, who was with him, to the house of correction, where they were con- 
fined six months. During the examination, Justices Bennet and Barton en- 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTTZERS. 283 

deavored to draw from him some expression by which they might prove him 
guilty of holding blasphemous opinions. They asked him ' If he had no sin ? ' 
to which he replied, ' Christ, my Saviour, has taken away my sins, and in him 
there is no sin.' Then they asked him ' How the Quakers knew that Christ did 
abide in them?' and were answered, 'By his Spirit that he had given them!' 
Finding nothing in this whereon to ground a charge, they ensnaringly asked, 
' Whether any of them were Christ? ' To which George Fox promptly replied, 
' Nay, we are nothing; Christ is all' But although he thus cleared himself and 
his fellow-professors from their imputations, vet they made out a mittimus and 
sent him and his companion to prison, as persons charged with uttering and 
broaching divers blasphemous opinions, contrary to the late act of Parlia- 
ment." 

This was three years prior to the period that Cromwell's 
Parliament acted in favor of religious freedom, and annulled 
the former tyrannous conformity laws. This same writer, 
speaking of this matter, says : 

" After the dissolution of the monarchy by the death of Charles, and the 
consequent suppression of the national form of worship, much greater latitude 
was allowed to the ministers of religion." 

Cromwell and the Independents aided the Friends 

IN MAINTAINING KeLIGIOUS FREEDOM. 

" During Cromwell's victorious campaign in Scotland the ministers of that 
nation (Presbyterian) objected against him for opening the pulpit doors to all 
intruders. To which he replied, ' We look on ministers as helpers of, not lords 
over, the faith of God's people. I appeal to their consciences, whether any, 
denying their doctrines, or dissenting from them, will not incur the censure of 
a sectary? And what is this but to deny Christians their liberty, and assume 
the infallible chair? Where do you find in Scripture that preaching is included 
(i. e., limited) within your functions ? Though an approbation from man may 
have order in it, and may be well, yet he that hath not a better than that hath 
none at all ! I hope he that ascended up on high may give his gifts to whom 
he pleases, and if those gifts be the seal of missions, why are you envious 
though Eldad and Medad prophesy ? You know who has bid us covet earn- 
estly the best gifts, but chiefly that we may prophesy, which the apostle ex- 
plains to be speaking to instruction, edification, and comfort, which the in- 
structed, edified, and comforted can best tell the energy and effect of.'"* 

* So the " Lord Commissioner, Fiennes, in 1657, warns the Parliament of the 
rock on which many had split, which was a spirit of imposing upon men's 
consciences in things wherein God leaves them a latitude, and would have them 
free. ... As God is no respecter of persons, so he is no respecter of forms, 
but in what form soever the spirit of imposition appear he will testify against 



284 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Thus did Cromwell and Fiennes sustain in full the position 
assumed by the Friends to their justification in claiming to 
exercise the ministerial function in obedience to the call of 
God, and not of man — a position that all Protestants have 
in theory, before and since, admitted, though they have not 
always been ready to sustain it. 

We allude to this here, because a false sacerdotalism and 
ritualism are mutually dependent upon each other, and a 
priesthood holding the keys of the Church, and the " keys of 
the kingdom," in its own hands through sacraments, is 
usually the embodiment of sectarianism and ecclesiastical 
tyranny. 

It was from such convictions of Cromwell, and the Inde- 
pendents and Friends, of the injustice of proscription on ac- 
count of religious faith, that the following was inserted in the 
Constitution of a new form of government instituted by the 
Parliament, under Cromwell, when declared Protector of Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Ireland : 

"It is ordained, 1. That the Christian religion contained in the Scriptures 
be held forth and recommended as the public profession of these nations. 

"2. That none be compelled to conform to the public religion by penalties, 
or otherwise; but that endeavors be used to win them by sound doctrine and 
the example of a good conversation. 

" 3. That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, though differing in 
judgment from the doctrine, worship, and discipline publicly held forth, shall 
not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of their faith, 
and the exercise of their religion; so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil 
injury of others, and to the actual disturbance of the public peace ; and pro- 
vided this liberty be not extended to Popery or prelacy, or to such as, under a 
profession of Christ, hold forth and practise licentiousness." 

it. If men, though otherwise good, will turn ceremony into substance, and 
make the kingdom of Christ consist in circumstances, in discipline, and in 
form?, ... in vain do they protest against the persecution of God's people, 
when they make the definition of God's people so narrow that their persecution 
is as broad as any other, and usually more fierce, because edged with a sharper 
spirit. It is good to hold forth a public profession of the truth, but not so as 
to exclude those that cannot come up to it in all points from the privilege that 
belongs to them as Christians, much less to the privilege that belongs to them 
as men." 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZERS. 285 

The reader will discover that the above articles favoring 
religious liberty, while simply just in form toward all dissent- 
ers, were, nevertheless, unjust toward the Papists and Episco- 
palians, for however much these had persecuted dissenters, 
now was the time to render good for evil, and teach even to 
persecutors the more excellent way of impartial religious 
toleration. 

It is to be confessed, moreover, that although Cromwell and 
the Independents desired such toleration, yet many others of 
the dissenters even regarded it as unsafe. The Presbyterians 
of that day would by no means assent (no more than did the 
Independents in Boston at a later day); hence there was much 
suffering on the part of the Friends and Baptists (see twelve 
years imprisonment of John Bunyan). The Presbyterians, 
having the power of government, or as members of Parlia- 
ment, insisted as strenuously on uniformity as had the Episco- 
palians. The "divine right" of the prelacy they would sim- 
ply change for the divine right of the Presbytery ! They pro- 
nounced toleration the "root of gall and bitterness," as " con- 
trary to godliness, opening a door to libertinism and profanity, 
and that it ought to be rejected as soul-poison." " Liberty of 
conscience," they said, "is the nourisher of all heresies and 
schisms!" Strange they did not see that this was full-orbed 
Popery. But they did not till afterwards their own backs 
felt the smart, as they had before, and they drank freely of 
the bitter cup they were so anxious others should drink. 

This cup they drank in the reign of Charles II., when con- 
formity to the Episcopal Church was again rigidly enforced. 
Tithes for the Established Church were exacted of all ; heavy 
fines for not attending on the worship of the Established 
Church ; in default of the payment of these, goods and hinds 
were seized and sold, and thus many were despoiled, and fi- 
nally banishment was enforced on pain of death if these laws 
were disregarded. Oaths were required of Friends, especially 
the oath of allegiance, and tithes, and conformity, all which 
thev could not in conscience render, and a confiscation and ini- 



286 : RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

prisonment, and banishment, or death, was the result in many 
thousands of cases. 

Let it be understood that all the dissenters of England at 
this time were for reforming, not only from Popery, but also 
from much that was akin to Popery in the Established Church. 
As the last quoted writer says : 

"It is interesting to observe that the different religious societies -which have 
arisen since the Reformation all aimed at the attainment of greater degrees of 
spirituality, and a more fervent piety, than was generally to be found in the 
sect from which they sprung. The idea that forms were too much substituted 
for power, and a decent compliance with the externals of religion for its heart- 
changing work, seems to have given rise to them all. E;ich successive advance 
lopped off some ceremonial excrescences, with a view of making the system 
more conformable to the apostolic pattern. ... It is no arrogant assumption 
to assert that, to whatever point in the Reformation we turn our attention, we 
find the germ of those principles which were subsequently developed and 
carried out by the founders of the Society of Friends. . . . Opinions very 
similar to those held by this society, on the subjects of the indwelling and 
guidance of the Holy Spirit, baptism, and other ceremonies, superstitious rites, 
war, oaths, and a ministry of human appointment, were extant, antecedent to 
the rise of the Friends. During the fifteenth century there were a number of 
persons in England who denied the necessity of water-baptism, and held that 
'Christian people were sufficiently baptized in the blood of Christ, and needed 
no water, and that the sacrament of baptism with water, used in the Church, 
is but a light matter, and of small effect.' ' Some of these/ says the same his- 
torian, ' suffered death by fire, for adherence to their principles; and for a long 
time afterwards, those who entertained similar views were the objects of severe 
persecution.' " 

"We are amazed that this writer should state that the distin- 
guishing tenets of the Society of Friends, specially relating to 
ceremonials, had not previously been held by any considerable 
body of people. He certainly had not read the record of the 
past, and was not aware to what extent church ly historians 
had falsified history by their omissions in this respect. It is 
not only true that such anti-ritualistic bodies have prevailed 
in great numbers in all the past ages, embracing nearly all the 
dissentients from Popery, but it must also be with candor con- 
ceded that in precise proportion as those bodies which admitted 
the divinity of our Lord, and taught salvation through his 
atonement, have disesteemed the ceremonials of religion, have 



CHRONICLES OF THE NON-BAPTIZEES. 287 

they exalted the moral law, having substituted, as if by in- 
tuition, or a divine teaching, the moral law for a ceremonial 
law. 

True a revolt from the externals needful to manifest Chris- 
tian faith may be carried too far, even to a perfect quietism; 
but it is quite a different thing to admit the obligation, and 
faithfully practise moral duties, from binding a yoke of an un- 
defined ceremonial upon the Christian Church. 

Wickliffe, the earliest reformer from the Papacy in Eng- 
land, denied that all sins are abolished in baptism ; asserted 
that children are saved without baptism, and that the baptism 
of water profiteth not without the baptism of the Holy Spirit. 
Thus we see that in England, as in Germany and France, the 
anti-ritualistic leaven was working out its legitimate result of 
a complete deliverance from the former bondage of a ritual 
law, through all the period of the Reformation. This com- 
plete emancipation crystallized and took form and embodi- 
ment in the Society of Friends. 

The Highest Type of the Christian Life with the 
Non-Sacramentarians — Cotemporary Demoraliza- 
tion of Society. 

But let it be remembered that their opposition to a ritual 
law and to the baptism with water was induced by the general 
apostasy and corruption of those churches most marked by a 
ritual trust, while it is the universal admission that the highest 
manifestation of the Christian life is only attained by the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost. The aim to attain and exhibit 
the fruits of such a life has been manifest from their rise, and 
was a special need of the Church during the first hundred 
years of their testimony, since during this period they were 
the only witnesses for full salvation from sin, and the higher 
life of holiness in all the Christian world. Luther and the 
Lutherans had rejected the doctrine ; Calvin and the Calvin- 
ists had done the same ; the Papists and the English Church 
were sunk in corruption; the Methodists had not yet arisen ; 



288 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

the Independents, Presbyterians, and Baptists, who had a little 
earlier origin, had rejected the doctrine that the gospel offered 
freedom from sin in this life ; hence it is true with respect to 
the Friends as in all former ages, that a complete history of 
the advocates of the higher Christian life, and of full salva- 
tion through Christ, must embrace in every age those, and 
oft only those, who rejected the baptism of water. Touching 
this matter, hear William and Thomas Evans again (Int'n, 
p. 17) : 

Friends special Witnesses for the Higher Christian 

Life. 

" It is not correct to say that Friends spake little on the great doctrines of 
justification and remission of sins through Jesus Christ, our propitiation; for 
they frequently and earnestly insisted on them. But finding that these were 
generally admitted by all Christian professors, while many either entirely 
denied or undervalued the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, they were en- 
gaged to call the attention of the people to this as the life of true religion; 
without which the Scriptures could not make them wise unto salvation, and 
Christ would have died for them in vain. While thus enforcing this important 
doctrine of Holy Scripture, they were careful to recognize the whole scope of 
the gospel in all its fulness. They declared against that construction of the 
doctrine of Christ's satisfaction which taught men to believe they could be 
justified from sins while they continued in them impenitent; asserting that 
the very design of Christ's coming in the flesh was to save his people from their 
sins, and to destroy the works of the devil. Yet they fully and gratefully 
acknowledged the mercy of God in giving his dear Son a ransom and atone- 
ment for mankind, that the penitent sinner might be justified freely by his 
grace. 

"They ever held the Sacred Scriptures as paramount authority as a guide 
to faith and duty, and constantly appealed to them; thence they drew all 
moral precepts and instruction in the way of life through Christ, but ever in- 
sisted that only by the power of the Holy Ghost those truths were sent home 
to the heart and affections, regenerating and making all new in the image of 
Christ. Convinced that this great, work was in danger of being overlooked 
amid a round of ceremonial observances, they zealously preached the doctrine 
of the new birth, calling their hearers to come to Jesus Christ, the true light, 
that they might experience him to shine in their hearts. But the offices of the 
Holy Ghost, or Comforter, as the guide into all truth, as the unction from the 
Holy One which teacheth of all things, and is truth and is no lie, was the 
great theme of their contemplation and ministry; and it stands forth con- 
spicuously in their writings." 



CHRONICLES OF THE XON-BAPTIZERS. 289 

The writer adds : 

"When we turn to the sacred volume and read there the numerous testimo- 
nies borne to the great importance of this doctrine in the gospel plan, we can- 
not wonder to find it prominently set forth by a people professing eminently 
the spirituality of religion. ... In carrying out these views of the spiritual 
nature of the gospel, and of the great work of the soul, described as the ' wash- 
ing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost/ the primitive Friends 
were led to the adoption of their peculiar sentiments respecting water-baptism 
and the use of the bread and wine. They found it stated in the sacred volume 
that, as there is ' one Lord and one faith/ so there is but ' one baptism/ and 
that the baptism which now saves is not the putting away the filth of the flesh 
but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ. Corresponding with this is the saying of the apostle to the Romans: 
' Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were bap- 
tized into his death?' and also to the Galatians: 'As many of you as have 
been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,- ' and to the Colossians : 'We 
are buried with him by baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him, through 
the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.' Sensi- 
ble that these blessed effects were not the result of dipping or sprinkling the 
body with water, and apprehensive that many professors of religion were 
trusting in the outward ceremony, while neglecting the necessary work of 're- 
pentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ/ they pressed upon 
their hearers the necessity of experiencing that one saving baptism. . . . Con- 
vinced that the gospel is not a dispensation of shadows but the very substance 
of heavenly things themselves, they believed that the true communion of saints 
consisted in the divine intercourse which is maintained between our merciful 
Saviour and the souls of his faithful disciples, agreeably to his own gracious 
words : ' Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and 
open the door, I will come into him and sup with him, and he with me.'" 

"As there is a strong tendency in the human mind to substitute the form of 
religion for the power, and to satisfy the conscience by a cold compliance with 
exterior performances while the heart remains unchanged, and inasmuch as 
the baptism of the Holy Ghost and the communion of the body and blood of 
Christ, of which water-baptism and the bread and wine are admitted to be 
only signs, are not dependent on these outward ceremonies nor are necessarily 
connected with them, and are declared in Holy Scripture to be effectual to the 
salvation of the soul, which the signs are not, Friends have always believed it 
their place and duty to hold forth to the world a clear and decided testimony 
to the living substance — the spiritual work of Christ in the soul, and a blessed 
communion with him." 

We may close this survey of the general character and work 
of this anti-ritualistic body with the words of the writer we 
are quoting : 
19 



290 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

" Happily for the society it has nothing to fear from investigation, con- 
ducted in the spirit of candor and fairness, concerning the soundness of its 
faith or its works of faith and love. A long list of worthies have illustrated 
the power of that gospel they preached, both in life and in death." 

The fervor of their piety and the earnestness of their con- 
secration to Christ — exhibiting, of course, the frailties com- 
mon to fallible men — has never been excelled, we are confident, 
by any equal number of the household of faith in any age of 
the Church. 

In a succeeding chapter, we purpose to give the testimony 
of several of their writers (with others) to the non-value of 
rituals and sacraments, as taught and observed by many of 
the churches 

THE SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANS OF RUSSIA. 

The Friends in their ministerial travels in various parts of 
the Christian world have discovered here and there those who 
earnestly protest against the ritualism into which the Papal, 
Greek, and Armenian churches have relapsed. Stephen 
Grellet, himself converted from the Catholic faith directly 
to the Friends' views (as he says, being awakened by the warn- 
ing voice of God only, crying " eternity, eternity," in his ear), 
travelled much in different parts of Europe, especially among 
the French, who spoke his native tongue, and in Russia, where 
also, among the higher classes, the French tongue is much 
spoken. He gives the following account of a theological 
teacher, and a class of Christians called Malakans, the former 
found in the Crimea, and the latter extending their societies 
from the Crimea, the Asiatic border, even to Siberia. He 
says : 

" In the evening we went to the monastery to see Macariu*, rector of a semi- 
nary for the sons of the clergy, ... he is a man of great religious tenderness, 
and he imparted some of the exercises of his mind, and the ways in which the 
Lord, by his Spirit, is pleased to lead him; paths which very few about him 
can understand. He has been much tried about the A^arious ceremonies of the 
Greek Church, the bowing down before images, and also respecting the 
ministry, baptism, and the Supper. ' His views/ says Grellet, ' are similar to 



CHRONICLES OF THE N02J-BAPTIZERS. 291 

ours.' Also, ' we had a visit from an old man, eighty years of age, one of the 
people called Malakans, who call themselves Spiritual Christians.' This people 
are a branch (orthodox) of a people called Duhobertzi, who, with these, have 
suffered much persecution from the clergy and the government on account of 
their religious principles. Macarius, attending with us (Grellet and William 
Allen) one of their meetings, at the close thus broke out, in a flood of tears, 
and exclaimed, ' In what a state of darkness and ignorance have I been ! I 
thought I was alone in these parts, endeavoring to walk in the light of the 
Lord, to wait for, and sensibly feel the influences of his Spirit, so as to be able 
to worship him in spirit and in truth, and behold, how great has been my 
darkness, so that I did not discover that blaze of light, here round about me, 
among a people poor in the world, but rich in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.' 
.... They were very free to give us every information we asked for, and they 
did it in few words, accompanied, generally, with some scripture, as their rea- 
sons for believing or acting as they did; these were so much to the purpose 
that any one acquainted with the Friends' writings might conclude they had 
selected from them the most clear and appropriate passages to support their 
testimonies. On all the cardinal points of the Christian religion, the fall of 
man, salvation by Christ through faith, the meritorious death of Christ, his 
resurrection, ascension, etc., their views are very clear ; also respecting the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit, worship, ministry, baptism, the supper, oaths, etc., 
etc., we might suppose they were thoroughly acquainted with our religious so- 
ciety, but they had never heard of us, nor of any people that profess as they 
do. William Allen (Friend preacher), who accompanied Grellet, says of them : 
' They believe in the Holy Scriptures, and in the divinity of our Lord and 
Saviour as fully as we do ourselves, and that the influence of the Holy Spirit 
is not withheld from any. They believe that the only true baptism is that of 
Christ with the Spirit, and reject water-baptism as unnecessary. They con- 
sider that the communion with Christ is wholly spiritual, and make use of no 
outward ceremony.' The Malakans extend on the east even to the Caucasus 
mountains, and, counting all their societies, Grellet says they ' number about 
one hundred thousand.'" 

Here then, unknown to western Protestants, is found a 
numerous class of Protestants, as large as some of our denomi- 
nations in America, who have, doubtless, continued their testi- 
mony against a ritual law from the days of Paul, the apostle, 
the Paulicians of the eighth century, and the Catharists of 
the thirteenth century to the present time : a people who, 
amid the surrounding darkness, have maintained the true 
spiritual worship, and have known God and have been known 
of him though earth has known them not. 



292 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

CHRISTIAN UNIONISTS OF AMERICA. 

It is but proper to add in the conclusion of this chapter 
that some of the advocates of Christian union, such as would 
be attained by the merging of the different evangelical de- 
nominations, have come to the discovery that to attain such 
union, and at the same time insist on the invariable observance 
of an external baptism, is a thing utterly impracticable. 

Such begin to concede to applicants for church fellowship 
personal liberty in this matter, to observe rites, or not to ob- 
serve them, as a branch of the Protestant faith in America, 
"New Lights," so called, have done for an age or more. 

Formerly, affiliation with such religious societies and people 
as the Friends, or any others that rejected or treated lightly 
the forms and ceremonies of the churches, was not sought ; a 
larger charity is beginning to swell the heart of Christendom, 
and the great truth is beginning to be appreciated that, at 
least, harmony and reciprocity among all churches would be 
a blessing, and such fellowship and harmonious affiliation is 
more generally sought. Thus is seen advancing the glorious 
day when all those " hidden ones," so long known of God only, 
shall be also known of man as God's " peculiar people," and 
a canonical investiture with human authority will not be 
counted on as highly as being " clothed with power from on 
high " through the energies of the Holy Ghost. 

Then shall prejudice give place to universal Christian 
charity, and schisms shall disappear in a common unity ; and 
there shall be " one Lord, and his name one," o'er all the 
earth, and Christ's redeemed flock will be content with their 
" one Lord, one faith, one baptism." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE EUCHAEIST— AGAP.E— LOED'S SUPPER— FEAST OF 
CHARITY (LOVE FEAST)— PASCHA (PASSOVER)— EAS- 
TER— MASS. 

Is the Lord's Supper a Sacrament? 

We here touch a theme prolific in titles, either in ancient 
or modern times. Our own strictures thereon need be but brief, 
since we shall freely cite the testimony of others respecting it, 
and if our non-sacramentarian principle be the New Testa- 
ment principle, the observances that have been called by the 
names given at the head of this chapter are no more sacraments 
than are the twelve sacraments of Damiani, and the seven of 
the Papal See. There has been no less confusion and chaos 
in the Church respecting a sacramental supper than respecting 
a sacramental baptism. 

The attempt to rear a sacramental superstructure, called by 
the name of the " Lord's Supper," has indeed reared a fabric 
" chaotic, vast, and vague," showing the workmanship of a 
thousand diverse, if not adverse and perverse, workers in its 
rearing, rather than the oneness of mind and wisdom of the 
" wise Master Builder," the great Head of the Church. None 
will claim that this statement is an exaggeration. Of the 
nine terms used at the head of this chapter, to designate the 
feasts of the early Christian Church and the later Papacy, the 
first five given we understand to refer to one and the self-same 
thing, viz., the Love Feasts of the early Church. 

The other terms, pascha, etc., simply designate the Jewish 
Passover, being the Hebrew word and two English words by 
which it is translated, and the word mass, which latter word 

203 



294 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

designates that corruption of the Jewish Passover which has 
obtained among Papists. That the eucharist was simply a 
voluntary " feast of charity " in memorial of Christ and his 
love, and a token of fellowship among saints, especially as be- 
tween the rich and the poor in earlier days, we have the ample 
testimony of the best historians of the Church. And that 
the Jewish Passover, in its annual observance b} 7 " Judaizers, 
w 7 as sought to be engrafted upon the Christian Church, and 
by the name of pascha or Easter continues unto this day in 
some portions of the Church, we have equivalent ample testi- 
mony. 

That there were the same collateral elements of Judaism 
and Gentilism manifested in different observances in the early 
churches no careful reader of the records of that era will 
question. 

That the Jewish converts kept up the pascha (passover) for 
two or three centuries we have but to refer to Mosheim, and 
every other church historian, to show. And that (instead 
of the ten feasts of the Jewish dispensation, required to be ob- 
served) the Christians, both Jews and Gentiles, did also keep 
their " feasts of charity " (alias the Lord's Supper), the evi- 
dence appears conclusive. That Jude's " feast of charity," 
Paulas " Lord's Supper," and Luke's " breaking of bread," 
from " house to house," with " gladness and singleness of 
heart," refer to one and the same thing our greatest scholars 
now admit. Prof. John Morgan (of Oberlin), in his " Greek 
Exegesis," expressed his full assurance that they were one and 
the same. 

If this be admitted, the query arises, did Jesus Christ en- 
join a " daily " sacramental remembrance of him in " breaking 
bread from house to house " ? 

We remember that the Apostle Paul enjoins, " Whatsoever 
ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men," but we 
are not aware that Christians have therefore assumed that 
every act is to be counted a sacrament. And yet the true 
Christian ideal is, that whenever we " eat or drink," we should 



A SACRAMENT? 295 

" offer thanks/' and with joy offer our sacrament of gratitude 
to God. "In everything we should give thanks," and our 
hearts be full of praise in remembrance of what Christ has 
done for us, granting us a deliverance infinitely greater than 
Israel received when delivered from Egyptian bondage. 

Is it an abuse of Christ's words to enlarge their scope, and 
literally " as oft as we eat the bread " God gives, and " drink 
of the cup" that overflows from his bounty, remember Christ 
and what his death has purchased, and thus "show forth the 
LoraVs death till he comes ? " We candidly ask, could not 
Christ as properly have used these words if he had foreseen 
that the disciples would never again keep a passover festival, 
but would " daily " break the bread and drink the cup, espe- 
cially with the poor and the needy coming into the fold, whom 
the rich could and did, thus feed, " with gladness and singleness 
of heart ? " Moreover, would not such a feast of love, or " Lord's 
Supper," be infinitely more honorable to Christ, and beneficent 
to man, than any mere formula or stated ceremonial imitation 
of no intrinsic worth to any one, could be ? We think so, and 
here we have precisely the kind of Lord's Supper, or eucharist, 
or agapoz, or " feast of charity," that was so common in the 
early Christian Church. And, not only so, but the only kind 
then extant, save the pascha or Jewish passover, continued by 
Judaizers. Christ, as a Jew, did keep the Jewish passover, 
and took occasion at the last one he attended with his disciples 
to turn their attention away from past temporal deliverances, to 
the deliverance he would give them from sin and spiritual 
foes, through his death and resurrection. But even this was in 
connection with a full (passover) feast, and so all his disciples 
for ages kept their love feasts and their passovers in very nearly 
the same form.* 

® Christ copied the Jewish customs in the passover. 

The Jewish patriarch called together his household, and their immediate at- 
tendants, and himself officiated as priest in the celebration of the passover. 
Christ did the same. 
He had no family but his attendant disciples, and these, as their head, he 



296 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

And in the interval between Christ's resurrection and ascen- 
sion, in the New Dispensation (for Christ's last passover feast 
was not in the New Dispensation), Christ drew near to his dis- 
ciples by the Sea of Tiberias ; and as they were fishers, and 
had toiled all night and taken nothing, they might well need 
food, so Christ asks, " Children, have ye here any meat ? " 
They said " No." Jesus, being in the resurrection (as he was), 
could still realize their bodily wants, and knowing that 
"mercy" is better than " vain oblations" saith unto them, 
"Come and dine!" Here, then, is an example worthy of all 
acceptation, in this world where the form and shadow is so apt 
to usurp the place of the substance. It is indeed a question 
well worthy of frequent pondering whether the " Lord's Din- 
ner " be not of much more practical importance, and its oft 
observance would not tend much more to Christ-likeness, than 
the innumerable church bickerings over the Lord's Supper. 

Eev. Robert Patterson, of Chicago, on the occasion of a 
national thanksgiving, touched this matter discreetly and 

adroitlyin an address to his church (see p. ), one of the best 

lectures on the Christian's real feast of love (of more account 
than signs and shadows) ever written. It deserves transcribing 
in letters of light and placarding on the front of every pulpit 
and speaking-stand in Christendom. And if the tomes of dry 

assembled and partook of the passover -with them, himself, like the patriarch, 
distributing the bread and cup after the paschal lamb was eaten. Had he been 
about to institute a new ordinance for all his followers, he would have, unques- 
tionably, called together all such followers, within reach, and set the example 
of the undivided communion and fellowship of saints in the beginning. But 
there were " above five hundred of the brethren " in and about Jerusalem at 
the time he partook of the last passover with the " twelve," yet only these, his 
regularly attendant " household," were with him at the feast. Moreover, the 
sisters in the faith are as much a part of Christ's believing household and of 
his Church as the brotherhood, but not one of these was invited to be present 
or was present at the final passover. 

Did Christ intend to reject all the sisterhood from the communion of saints? 
In truth the assumption that Christ instituted a new ordinance for all his fol- 
lowers, with only a fraction of these present, is the most baseless (i. e., bare of 
evidence in its favor) of any practice that has gained so long a standing in the 
Church. 



IS THE LOED'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 297 

theology and creeds that fill a volume, and the sacraments so 
punctiliously observed, should all give place to such a sacrament 
as he sets forth, of which Christ is the prime minister, it would 
be the greatest blessing the Church or the world ever experi- 
enced. It matters little when Christ invites us to a feast 
whether it be a dinner or a supper (as modern sacramentarians 
show by their example) ; the great thing is to spread the feast, 
and bid the poor and needy draw near, to help the lame to 
walk there, the deaf to hear, be eyes to the blind, and " bid 
the weak be strong." 

That this is Christ's ideal of the true feast of fellowship, 
feast of charity, feast of love, rather than a sacrament with 
empty signs and tokens merely, is evident also from the fact 
that Christ has abundantly told us (John vi.) that his real 
supper " in his kingdom " is wholly spiritual. " The words 
that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. The 
flesh profiteth nothing." 

To eat symbolic " bread," or drink the material blood, or 
the " wine," what does this profit, if Christ be not seen by 
faith ? and if he be seen by faith, of what avail the " flesh," or 
the external sign ? 

That Paul had in mind this very distinction between the 
sacramentarian's ritualistic idea of the acceptable sacrament 
and offering, and the Christian's idea, seems evident from his 
monition in 1 Cor. xi. 20, 21 : 

"When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the 
Lord's Supper. [Why ?] For in eating, every one taketh before other his own 
supper : and one is hungry, and another is drunken." 

That is, the rich, who brought abundance to the feast, dis- 
played their wealth by excess and riot in feasting, leaving the 
poor, who had little or nothing to bring to the supper, hunger 
and shame ! 

Paul suggests that if they would spread delicate feasts for 
themselves only, they (the rich) had " their own houses to eat 
and drink in," and should not come into the love feast, the 
assembly of the saints, where the "rich and the poor meet to- 



298 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

gether," to make their display. They should rather feed the 
poor first, thus " tarrying one for another," as was the case 
when the right spirit pervaded the partakers of the feast. 

This would render it a feast after the pattern and mind of 
Christ, a " supper of the Lamb," and " acceptable and well- 
pleasing to God." 

Now Paul did not close his reprimand of the Corinthian 
Church for their improper way of conducting the " Lord's 
Supper " by telling them that it was merely designed to be a 
" token " and " memorial " of Christ's death and resurrection, 
and therefore they should only use symbols or emblems of his 
body broken and his blood shed (no ancient feast or " sacra- 
ment" was thus minified), nor does he in the least inhibit 
the feast: he only enjoins that they should see to it that the 
rich and the poor all fare alike at this " Supper of the Lord," 
who died for all alike. 

This Paul received " of the Lord," or (may we say) " heard 
respecting the Lord " (for Paul was not at the last passover 
Christ ate with his disciples), that Christ, the same night in 
which he was betrayed, " took bread, and when he had given 
thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my body which 
is broken for you : this do in remembrance of me ! " and thus 
they ate a full feast. No longer were they to remember 
Moses, and the bondage their fathers escaped, but henceforth 
turn their attention to the Great Deliverer from Satan's yoke 
and sin's captivity. Christ had said (not in the form of com- 
mand but thus), " as oft as ye do it, do it in remembrance of 
me." 

Did Paul change Christ's "as oft" to a specific command, 
"Do this (oft) or at intervals, in remembrance of Christ?" 
We beg leave to suggest that Paul was not so prone to estab- 
lish a ceremonial law (in his inspired writings we mean), but 
warns against "ordinances," "days," and "meats," and 
" times," and " seasons," from the beginning to the end. 
Read his letters to the churches once more and see. The in- 
spiration of 1 Cor. xi. is not different from the inspiration of 






IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 299 

Ephesians ii. and iii. and Col. ii. and iii. — i. e., the same Spirit 
inspired each. 

Nor does his inspiration exceed that of Christ the Master. 
Paul should be understood, then, as simply rehearsing Christ's 
instruction to eat and drink henceforth in remembrance of 
Christ and not of Moses, and after the pattern of Christ's dis- 
pensing love to his family of disciples. Their "giving of 
thanks" now (not annually nor casually), but daily and con- 
stantly, should be in view of what Christ had done, the Great 
Redeemer and Purchaser of all blessings temporal and spir- 
itual. Hence the Christian expresses these "thanks" every 
time he comes around a table spread with God's bounty, and 
thus, if he is sanctified in heart, every meal becomes a sacrament. 
So it was with the converts following the Pentecostal effusion 
of the Holy Spirit. " Daily," from house to house, they 
" brake bread, one with another, with gladness and single- 
ness of heart." 

This was in harmony with the Christian ideal : Christ all in 
all, in all and through all, and above all ; all principalities and 
powers, and rites and ceremonies, and dispensations and sea- 
sons, being now subjected to him, and lost in him. 

Moses gave the passover ; it pointed to Christ, our Passover. 
The feast continued until Christ, our Passover, came, and now 
to keep up a type or symbol after the real Passover has come 
is like a finger-board pointing the wrong way, and, therefore, 
away from our goal. It is like asking for moonlight after the 
sunlight has come. 

And Paul (1 Cor. x.) no less plainly than Christ (John vi.) 
assures us that Christ's true Passover, true Supper, and our 
true " communion " therein, is spiritual. Paul says (1 Cor. 
x. 15, 17), " I speak as to wise men : judge ye what I say. 
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion 
of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not 
the communion of the body of Christ? For we, being many, 
are one bread and one body ; for we are all partakers of that one 
bread." Is not this the spiritual communion of Christ's spir- 



300 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

itual household? And this Paul afterwards compares to 
Israel " after the flesh," all partaking of the altar, so we spir- 
itually, and only thus, all partake of Christ. 

In this sense only are we the " one bread," and the " one 
body " of Christ. 

We have our " communion " then within ourselves (with 
Christ), and not in any heathen temple (of which Paul was 
speaking), nor at any mere earthly carnal board. 

Christ's bread is the " bread that came down from heaven " 
" to give life unto the world." What Christian needs be told 
that the communion of the " body of Christ " and of the 
" blood of Christ " is not physical, i. e., literal in that sense, 
nor symbolic, if real, but " in the spirit," and not in the let- 
ter? 

But recurring to the actual festivals of the early Church 
we are aware that many have presumed that there were two 
such feasts ; the one the early Church designating by the title 
of the " Lord's Supper," the other by the title of agapce or 
love feast. And our Methodist brethren within the past cen- 
tury have, in many places, retained the two ; the one, the 
"supper," they deemed a real sacrament, the other only a 
voluntary expression of Christian fellowship, love, and good- 
will. Many have supposed that the same distinction between 
the two was known in the early Church, the one being observed 
as a sacrament, the other merely as a voluntary free-will offer- 
ing, in token of their love to Christ and to one another.* 

* If any distinction of feasts did at all exist, as we have before said, it was, on 
the part of the Judaizors, on the one hand a continuance of the passover, which 
has now become the Papal mass, and the Church of England Easter (annually 
observed), for the term Easter, found once only in the New Testament, is ren- 
dered direct from the word Pascha therein found. These Judaizers did, of 
course, change the intent of this feast, making it annually a feast unto the 
Lord, and not to Moses, but to what extent this Judaizing portion of the 
Church observed also the eucharistic feast of charity, at stated times, for Chris- 
tian fellowship and the benefit of the poor among them, doth not clearly ap- 
pear in historic records, since modern church historians have so utterly con- 
founded both the pascha and the eucharist of the early Church with what they 
without warrant term The Lord's Supper as now observed in the symbol. 



301 

But who does not see that the objects, or design of each, are 
thus made to flow into one, and become precisely homogeneous? 
and moreover he that will search the record will see that 
they became in early ages precisely one and the same. Nean- 
der, in one instance, confuses himself in trying to find a dis- 
tinction between these in the early record, but, we believe, in 
every other instance, permits their identity to stand apparent 
to all. 

Mosheim utterly confounds the pascha, the Jewish Passover, 
long retained among the Jewish converts, with the Lord's 
Supper, and indeed only here can he find a Lord's Supper, if 
he insist that there be one separate from the agapce, or early 
feast of charity. 

This pascha, observed in precisely Jewish style, for seven 
days, and commencing on the 14th day of* the 1st month, the 
month Nisan or Abib, and only changed to interpolate one 
day's remembrance of Christ's resurrection by a joyful feast 
on that day, rather than the " unleavened bread and bitter 
herbs," was kept up two or three centuries, and soon occasioned 
bitter controversies respecting the proper day on which to re- 
member the resurrection of Christ, as we shall see when we 
quote Mosheim's testimony respecting it. 

We first quote Neander's testimony respecting the agapce or 
love feasts, which, if they be not found to be a real sacrament, 
of the Lord's appointment, we shall have to recur to the Jew- 
ish pascha, observed only once each year, as the only alterna- 
tive if such sacrament must be found. 

As to the identity of the agapce and Lord's Supper, Neander 
thus speaks (vol. i. p. 327 ) : 

" So long as the agapce and the Lord's Supper were united together, the cele- 
bration formed no part of the divine service ! " Mark it was wholly separate 
from the religious convocation, and was simply the spread board of the after- 
noow conclave of Christian kindred and friends at their homes ! But Neander 
continues, "This (divine) service was held in the morning, and not until to- 
wards evening did the Church reassemble at the common love feast, and for 
the celebration of the Supper." 

The reader will note that here is a partial assuming that 



302 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

the one feast consisted of two parts, the love feast and the 
Lord's Supper ; as though the Lord's Supper itself were not 
a love feast and an expression of fellowship and unity of spirit, 
of which this eating and drinking together was designed to be 
the exhibition and proof. This, besides remembering Christ, 
as in all things else, filled the great design, provided charity- 
was especially shown to the poor on these occasions. 

Hear Tertullian on the agapoe in apologizing for the Chris- 
tian customs : 

" The cause of the supper {agapoe is his theme) being a worthy one, esti- 
mate the propriety with which it is managed (see Paul, 1 Cor. xi.) as its 
religious end demands. . . . No one approaches the table till prayer has first 
been offered (the universal custom at all meals in those days); as much is eaten 
as suffices to satisfy the demands of hunger — as much is drunk as consists with 
sobriety." 

Was there aught in all this that resembles the modern cus- 
tom of communicating by signs or tokens with bits of bread 
and the sip of wine ? And does not the difference of custom 
betoken a different intent in the customs of that day and 
this? 

The primitive Christians, Gentiles as well as Jews, con- 
ducted their feasts very much in the same manner (as well as 
their baptisms) ; hence, when Neander says, without citing 
one text as proof, " The celebration of the two symbols of 
Christian communion " (it should be of Christian non-commu- 
nion), " baptism and the Lord's Supper, belonged to the un- 
changeable plan of the Christian Church, as framed by its 
Divine Founder." If he had said they belonged to the un- 
changed forms of Judaism or Gentile ante-Christian festivals, 
transferred to Christianity, he w T ould have much more nearly 
hit the point and declared an undeniable truth. Let Nean- 
der himself be our witness to this. Hear him ("Planting 
and Training of the Church," p. 103) : 

"As to the celebration of the Holy Supper, it continued to be connected 
with the common meal, in which all members of one family joined, as in the 
yjrimitive Jewish Church and agreeably to its first institution." 

There, reader, is not that proof of unchanged Judaism en- 



IS THE LOKD ? S SUPPEE A SACEAMENT ? 303 

grafted upon Christianity? But hear him again (p. 100, 
ibid.) : 

" Some have endeavored to find, in 1 Cor. v. 7, a reference to a Christian 
Passover, to be celebrated in a Christian sense, with a decided reference to 
Christian truth, but we can find a reference only to a Jewish Passover, which 
was still celebrated by the Jewish Christians. . . . This practice of outward 
Judaism he (Paul) applies in a spiritualized sense to Christians. . . . Purify 
yourselves from the old leaven ... for Christ has been offered as our Paschal 
Lamb. Therefore as men purified from sin by Christ, our Paschal Lamb, let us 
celebrate the feast, not after the manner of the Jews, but so celebrate it that we 
may be a mass purified in heart from the leaven of sin." 

Now these words of Neander teach that the Jewish Passover 
was simply engrafted by transfer into the Christian dispen- 
sation with some change of idea and verbiage to suit the Chris- 
tian rather than the Jewish ages. It shows, also, that the 
Gentile Christians, by degrees, came to conform more and 
more to the Jewish mode of conducting religious festivals, for 
the agapce were of Gentile origin, while the pascha was " of 
the Jews." 

Hence mark the reasoning, as drawn from the historic 
record given by Neander : 

(a) The passover was still celebrated by Jewish Christians. 
(6) Christians celebrated their agapce at the same meal with 
the Lord's Supper, (c) They celebrated the "Holy Supper" 
precisely in the same manner as the Jews their passover, i. e., 
as families ; or at most as contiguous parts of the same con- 
gregation of believers. What is there in all this to justify 
modern efforts to enforce a union of all Christians around the 
sacraments? (d) The Jewish Passover was spiritualized by 
the Apostle Paul — 1 Cor. v. 7. Hence there is no Christian- 
ized outward passover or agapse. (e) The agapce was to 
be temporary, but the Supper ("spiritualized") to be un- 
changeable ! 

Now if any reader, either from history or from the logic 
above employed, which is Neander's, to an iota, will unravel 
the web or solve the mystery, and tell us which is the Lord's 
Supper, and which the love feast, and which the Jewish 



304 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Passover, we will confess the gratitude we owe for kindly as- 
sistance in the time of need. 

But Mosheim does not hesitate to tell us that the celebration 
of the " Lord's Supper " and that of the " Jewish Passover " 
was precisely one and the same thing in a large portion of the 
Christian Church, especially in the second century. Hear 
him (vol. i. p. 523) : 

" There arose toward the close of the second century, between the Christians 
of Asia Minor and those of other parts, particularly such as were of the Roman 
Church, a violent contention respecting a matter that related mainly to the 
form of religion, or divine worship, a thing in itself truly of light moment, but 
in the opinion of the disputants of very great importance. . . . The Asiatic 
Christians were accustomed to celebrate their passover — that is, the paschal 
feast, which it was at this time usual with the Christians to observe in com- 
memoration of the institution of the Lord's Supper — on the 14th day of the 
first Jewish month — that is to say, at the same time when the Jews ate their pas- 
chal lamb. This custom they stated, themselves, to have derived from the 
Apostles Philip and John. . . . But the rest of the Christians, as well in Asia 
as in Europe and Africa, deemed it irreligious to terminate a feast of the great 
week (the passover week) before the day devoted to the commemoration of the 
Saviour's return to life, and therefore deferred the celebration of their passover, 
or paschal feast, until the night immediately preceding the anniversary of 
Christ's resurrection from the dead. These alleged the authority of Peter and 
Paul. . . . Hence arose another difference greater still. As the Asiatic Chris- 
tians always commemorated our Lord's return to life on the third day after 
their partaking of the paschal supper, it was a circumstance liable to occur 
(and must occur) that they kept the anniversary of Christ's resurrection, which 
soon acquired and still retains the denomination of Pascha or Easter, on a dif- 
ferent day from the first day of the week, which is commonly termed Sunday — 
whereas the other Christians, as well those of the East as of the West, made it 
a rule to hold their annual celebration of our blessed Saviour's triumph over 
the grave on no other day (i. e., of the week) than that it actually occurred, 
viz. : the first day of the week." 

The reader will see that the one class followed the day of 
the month — the third after the 14th of Nisan — the other the 
day of the week ; hence the constant collision on this momen- 
tous matter. 

And let the Christian reader, bewildered by Episcopacy, 
Popery, Judaism, or any other sacramentarian or ritualistic 
fantasy, see, in language that cannot be gainsayed — carrying 



IS THE LOED ? S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 305 

demonstration at every point — the fact that so far as the 
Lord's Supper was observed at all by these Christians, it was 
simply observing the Jewish Passover — called by that name 
then — observed on the same week, beginning on the same day 
of the month, once each year, and continuing through the same 
period of time, one day of that time being set apart to com- 
memorate Christ's resurrection, and about this they differed 
and continually quarrelled. This, moreover, was called 
Paseha or Easter, and was the only day that had any special 
reference to Christ in the ivhole seven. He that cannot see in 
ihh simply the Jewish Passover perpetuated, and thereby 
what is termed the Lord's Supper, it seems cannot see what is 
perfectly palpable in its very face ! Now, why do not all 
church historians, like Mosheim, tell us how the Lord's Supper, 
as a sacrament, was introduced into the Christian Church? 
True, it would amply expose the Judaism of its origin. And 
we presume that even the above frank expose of the union of 
Judaism (the passover and the Lord's Supper) is expunged 
from later editions of Mosheim. 

Is it not time that the Protestant Eeformation had really 
escaped from Judaism, at least, since Popery has only made 
it indefinitely more a yoke of unparalleled bondage to the 
grossest added superstitions — teaching that in eating this 
sacrament we eat the " body and blood, and soul and divinity 
of Jesus Christ, without which there is no salvation to the 
soul?" 

And this pretence of making use of the Lord's Supper to 
show charity for saints, and all that is said about counting 
others worthy to come to the Lordis table with us, is both 
arrogating a Popish prerogative, and driving a spear to the 
very vitals of charity — since more religious feuds and fires of 
strife are kindled over it than over aught else pertaining to 
the worship and customs of the churches. All bigotry fastens 
first on this (or baptism, its assumed antecedent), and all re- 
ligious spleen and much personal rancor make use of this as 
the dagger to thrust an enemy through. 
20 



306 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

If any one is worthy — i. e., will come to Christ — Christ will 
receive ; that is enough. What are we that we should sit as 
judges one over another, and make it a law that they must 
be received by us also! The whited sepulchre is the most apt 
to set at naught his fellow. He comes forward with super- 
stition solemnized on his very countenance, and seeking to 
cover his hypocrisy with the saint's garb and atone for his 
sins with sacraments, would deceive the Almighty as well as 
contemn his fellow-men (the very elect) if he might. 

Are not the great sacramentarian churches simply vessels 
of corruption, moral rottenness painted in gorgeous colors? 
Yet the Greek Church has 150 or more holy days (more 
"holy" days than holy bishops, we fear!), and both Greek 
and Papal Churches more saints' days than the secular days 
of the year. Is this charity, thus robbing the poor worshipper 
of his time as well as tithes ? Which will God choose, mercy 
or sacraments? Let us have charity indeed in feeding the 
poor, and not its lying pretences, while peeling and robbing 
society ! 

Then will that which is perfect come ! The Sun of Right- 
eousness will shine in splendor upon the earth. When Christ 
is in you, the shadow pointing forward or backward, like type 
or tombstone, may pass away. The " Son of God is come," 
then let the emblem cease, and what the loss ? O Lord God, 
when will thy churches prize that which thou prizest, and 
cease the thought that thou art enamored of a punctilious 
(yet superstitious) routine of ceremonies ? 

To this expose of the origin and meaning of the pascha and 
agapce of the early Church agree the words of Christ — Luke 
xxii. 15-18 and 28-30 : 

" With desire I have desired (i. e., with great longings I have desired) to 
eat this passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not 
any more eat thereof until it he fulfilled in the kingdom of God." 

Now what is there in these words that sounds like teaching 
that the passover was then and there fulfilled, in the middle 
of that feast, and that a new feast was instituted before that 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 307 

feast concluded ? Not the shadow of a hint in that direction. 
We do not forget that Matthew says, "As they were eating, 
Jesus took bread and brake it," etc. ; but that is precisely the 
way a feast is continued or prolonged, for the occasion at least, 
and not the way to end it and establish a new one ! Moses, 
in establishing the passover, was not thus indefinite. Christ 
says, in the 16th verse, " I will not any more eat thereof 
(/. e. t of the passover) until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of 
God." As much as to say, I will then drink the new wine 
of the gospel kingdom with you, and I will give to you the 
"heavenly manna," and ye shall "sup with me and I with 
you" in the coming kingdom. To this also agree the 28th 
to 30th verse, as soon we may see. 

That this "kingdom of God" is the kingdom about to ap- 
pear in glory on the earth, the 18th verse fully establishes. 
" For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine 
until the kingdom of God shall come." Now this form of 
phrase is never used to designate the passing away of all 
earthly things, and the transplanting of the whole Church in 
the " upper kingdom " — that is termed Christ's coming to 
take his saints to himself, that they may see his glory there. 
But all promises of " supping with Christ," " drinking the 
wine new with him," etc., refer to the fulness of Christ re- 
ceived by his saints here — else you take away the Christian's 
militant kingdom. Hence when Christ says, 28th to 30th 
verse : 

" Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I ap- 
point unto you a kingdom as my Father hath appointed unto me, that ye may 
eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel." 

Now the " table " is to be as literal and external as the 
" thrones," and no more so, and none interpret the thrones as 
external, but spiritual. 

And the Apocalyptic seer — Rev. vii. — will tell us who these 
twelve tribes of Israel were (they were all on earth) ; and the 
twelve apostles, by their teachings and doctrines, ruled men, 



308 lilTUALISil DETHRONED. 

just as Christ, by the Father's appointment, ruled the 'Church. 
He planted and continues to rule it by his Spirit to the end. 
So we see the " eating and drinking " here promised (at this 
very passover), of Christ's disciples with himself and with each 
other in that new " coming kingdom of God," was to be alto- 
gether spiritual. Thus are we to " eat at Christ's table " in 
Christ's " kingdom," while, by the power of the Christian life 
and the energy of the Holy Ghost, we sit on the thrones judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel, and even the "world" and the 
" angels " of God. 

Having thus presented, in brief, our view of the nature of 
Christ's kingdom and the " supper " therein to be eaten, our 
brevity may be excused by herewith presenting the amply 
corroborative testimony of others. 

Other Witnesses. 

Were not our space limited we would gladly cite the whole 
of Robert Barclay's unanswerable refutation of the claims 
and pretensions of sacramentarians, but the history of the 
inception, and spread, and excessively perverting tendency 
of the sacramentarian idea, as given by John Allen, an Eng- 
lish Friend, in his exceedingly able work entitled State 
Churches, will be still more satisfactory and instructive to 
the reader. 

Origin and Advance of Papal and Protestant 

Sacramentarianism, 
From JOHN ALLEN in " STATE CHURCHES." 

" At the feast of the passover, it was customary among the Jews for 
the master of the house to take unleavened bread, then giving thanks to 
God, to break it and give to the family ; likewise to take the cup, give 
thanks, and distribute it to the household. This our Lord fulfilled ac- 
cording to the law ; but at the last passover supper he also drew their 
attention from the paschal lamb and the deliverance of their forefathers, 
the objects originally commemorated by the passover, to the breaking 
of his own body, and to the deliverance of man from sin, being the 
great purposes typified by both. 

"He therefore directed that 'as often as' they who were Jews ob- 
served the rite in future, they should do it ' in remembrance ' of him, 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT ? 309 

who was ' the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.' 
While the writer would acknowledge his reverent sense of the inestima- 
ble benefits which mankind have received by the coming of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, by his death as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and 
by the gift of the Holy Spirit purchased thereby, he would, nevertheless, 
see the mists of superstition and ignorance dispelled, which have ob- 
scured these great doctrines, that the glorious light of truth may be more 
clearly seen, and that the tenfold husks which have enveloped the living 
kernel may be removed, and the value of the inward substance more 
fully accepted, appreciated, and enjoyed. 

" The practice of breaking bread and drinking wine together, as a 
religious ceremony, prevailed extensively in the early periods of Chris- 
tianity, and was observed in various modes, according to the views of 
different churches. And this observance has been for ages, touching its 
nature, effects, and mode of celebration, the cause of more bitter con- 
troversy between Eoman Catholics and Protestants and of more blood 
being shed than any other matter of difference.* 



* Every reader of history is familiar with the so-called Thirty Years' War, 
which raged in the heart of Europe from 1618 to 1648. It was a religious 
war, and involved the great mass of Papists and Protestants, — the former 
under their Catholic League, the latter in their Evangelical Union. Schiller, 
in his history of this war, says, " From the interior of Bohemia to the mouth 
of the Scheldt, from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, it deso- 
lated countries, destroyed harvests, and laid towns and villages in ashes ; ex- 
tinguished, during half a century, the rising progress of civilization in Ger- 
many; and reduced the improving manners of the people to their ancient 
barbarism." 

In the Electorate of Hesse, seventeen towns, forty-seven castles, and three 
hundred villages had been burnt to the ground. In the Duchy of Wurtemberg, 
eight towns, forty-five villages, and thirty-six thousand houses, had been laid 
in ashes, and seventy thousand hearth-fires completely extinguished. Seven 
churches, and four hundred and forty-four houses, had been burned at Eichsted. 
Many towns that had escaped destruction were almost depopulated. Three 
hundred houses stood empty at Nordheiin; and more than two hundred had 
been pulled down at Gottingen, merely to serve for fuel. The wealthy city 
of Augsburg, which contained eighty thousand inhabitants before the war, 
had only eighteen thousand left when it closed; and this town, like many 
others, has never recovered its former prosperity. No less than thirty thousand 
villages and hamlets are said to have been destroyed ; in many others the 
population had entirely died out; and the unburied corpses of the last victims 
of violence or disease were left exposed about the streets or fields, to be 
mangled and torn to pieces by birds and beasts of prey. 

Germany is said to have lost twelve millions of inhabitants by the contest, 
and the population, which amounted to sixteen millions when the war broke 
out, counted hardly more than four millions when the war closed. The Duchy 
of Wurtemberg was reduced from half a million to forty-eight thousand ; 



310 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

" For the long period of nearly two hundred years from the time of 
Henry IV., about A. d. 1400, to th-3 reign of James I., it was made the 
principal test of religious faith, both in England and on the continent 
of Europe ; and the Roman Catholics more especially, but not exclu- 
sively, when they possessed the chief secular power, condemned and 
burnt as heretics, without distinction of age or sex, those who differed 
from their own views upon it. The grand question was, not whether the 
rite ought to be retained or not, for in the former opinion most coincided, 
but as to the real presence, that is, whether the words pronounced by the 
priest, 'This is my body,' are to be taken literally or figuratively; or 
Avhether they did or did not convert the bread into the real body of 
Christ. To prove the sentiments of the accused, the most minute dis- 
tinctions and the most subtle interrogatories were framed ; which often 
tended to confound both parties, and to involve them in wide contradic- 
tions and fearful absurdities. Yet on the issue depended life or death to 
hundreds if not thousands ! In consequence of a difference of opinion 
on this mysterious question many of the most eminent Christians of 



Bohemia from three millions to eight hundred and ninety thousand, and 
Saxony and Brunswick suffered in the same proportion. 

In the last campaign of the war, the French and Swedes burned no less 
than a hundred villages in Bavaria alone; and the skulls of St. Cosmas and 
St. Damianus had to be sent from Bremen to Munich, in order to console 
Maximilian for the ruin he had brought over his beautiful country. But even 
these pitiable relics failed to allay the fears of the unhappy elector; the share 
which he had taken in bringing about this desolating contest pressed heavily 
on the latter years of his life. In vain he prayed and fasted; the dreadful 
future was constantly before his sight, and the once valiant soldier and am- 
bitious prince died at last a trembling and despairing bigot. 

The crimes and cruelties of which the troops were frequently guilty would 
appear almost incredible, were they not attested in a manner to render doubt 
altogether impossible. But independent of private accounts, we have various 
reports from the authorities of towns, villages and provinces, complaining of 
the atrocities committed by the lawless soldiery. Peaceful peasants were 
hunted for mere sport, like the beasts of the forest; citizens were nailed up 
against doors and walls, and fired at like targets; while horsemen and Croats 
tried their skill at striking off the heads of young children at a blow! Ears 
and noses were cut off, eyes were scooped out, and the most horrible tortures 
contrived to extract money from the sufferers, or to make them disclose where 
property was concealed ! Women were exposed to every species of indignity; 
they were collected in bands, and driven, like slaves, into the camps of the 
ruffian soldiery, and men had to fly from their homes to escape witnessing the 
dishonor to which their wives and daughters were subjected ! 

Houses and villages were burnt out of mere wantonness, and the wretched 
inhabitants too often forced into the flames, to be consumed along with their 
dwellings. Amid these scenes of horror, intemperance, dissipation, and pro- 
fligacy were carried to the highest pitch. Intoxication frequently prevented 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 311 

Europe were consigned to the stake — a dreadful result, which could not 
have been accomplished without that unscriptural union or alliance of 
the secular and ecclesiastical power. . . . Whatever was condemned as 
heresy was looked on as a sin against God, and the worst of crimes. To 
make it appear the more heinous offence, public burning was judged the 
most proper punishment, being also a representation of everlasting 
burning.* 

" It was a common practice at the execution of heretics to fasten about 
their necks scraps of scripture and other evidences of their supposed 
guilt found in their possession, that the whole might be burnt together. 
Of all the matters which in England were condemned as heresies, and 
punished in this awful manner, the differences of opinion with respect to 
the bread and wine have been by far the most prominent and fruitful 
of victims. Manifold as these differences were, and mysterious as were 
the points in question, excuses were rarely admitted, at the time of the 

the Austrian General, Goltz, from giving out the countersign ; and General 
Banner was, on one occasion, so drunk for four days together that he could 
not receive the French ambassador, Beauregard, who had an important mes- 
sage to deliver. " Such was the state of triumphant crime," says a writer of 
the period, "that many, driven to despair, denied even the existence of a 
Deity, declaring that, if there were a God in heaven, he would not fail to 
destroy with thunder and lightning such a world of sin and wickedness." 

The peasants, expelled from their homes, enlisted with the oppressors, in 
order to inflict upon others the sufferings which they had themselves been 
made to endure. The fields were allowed to run waste, and the absence of in- 
dustry on one side, added to destruction on the other, soon produced famine 
which, as usual, brought infections and pestilential diseases in its train. In 
1635 there were not hands enough left at Schweidnitz to bury the dead, and 
the town of Ohlau had lost its last citizen. Want augmented crime, even 
where an increase was thought impossible. In many places hunger had over- 
come all repugnance to human flesh, and the tales of cannibalism handed down 
to us are of far too horrible a nature to be here repeated. 

The cup of human suffering was full even to overflowing, and the very aspect 
of the land was undergoing a rapid change. Forests sprung up during the 
contest, and covered entire districts, which had been in full cultivation before 
the war: and wolves and other beasts of prey took possession of the deserted 
haunts of men. This was particularly the case in Brunswick, Brandenburg 
and Pomerania, where heaps of ashes in the midst of wildernesses served long 
afterwards to mark the spots where peace and civilization had once flourished. 
In many parts of the country, the ruins of castles and stately edifices still 
attest the fury with which the war was carried on; and on such spots tradition 
generally points out the surrounding forests, as occupying the sites of fertile 
fields, whence the lordly owners of the mansions derived food and subsistence 
for themselves and their numerous retainers. 

* Now which will the reader judge to be the most justly obnoxious to the 
"everlasting burning," the judges or their victims in these cases? 



312 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Reformation, by the combined politico-ecclesiastical authorities, and the 
bloody statutes ' de hseretico comburendo ' were enforced with rigid and 
dreadful severity. 

" The earliest Christian writers scarcely allude to this rite. . . . Ter- 
tullian speaks of the celebration of the eucharist in connection with the 
meals of the early Christians ; as we read of the ' breaking of bread ' in 
private houses and public assemblies. Irenseus contended, about the year 
200, that the eucharist should be regarded as ' a sacrifice ; ' thus opening 
a floodgate through which the Church was deluged with error. . . . Pub- 
lic prayers were followed by oblations of bread, wine, and other things ; 
every one offering according to his ability ; and jsartly from hence, all 
those who were in necessity derived their subsistence. . . . The wine, in 
many churches, was mingled with water, and the bread was divided into 
several portions ; some being carried to the sick or absent members of the 
church, as a token of love and fellowship. The ministers, likewise, re- 
ceived from individuals meal or flour, with which a large loaf was made, 
called panis dominions (the priest's loaf), for use in the communion, and 
for distribution to the people. Participation in the ceremony was, even 
then, by many considered essential to salvation, and was by Tertullian 
first called a ' sacrament.' 

" A writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica thus describes the celebration 
of the eucharist by early Christians in some places : ' After the custom- 
ary oblations had been made, the deacon brought water to the bishops 
and presbyters standing around the table, to wash their hands, according 
to the language of the Psalmist, ' I will wash mine hands in innocency, 
and so will I compass thy altar, O Lord.' Then the deacon cried out, 
' Embrace and kiss each other,' which being done, the whole congrega- 
tion prayed for the peace and welfare of the church, for the tranquillity 
and repose of the world, for wholesome weather, and for all ranks and 
degrees of men. After this followed mutual salutations of the ministers 
and people ; and then the bishop or presbyter, having sanctified the ele- 
ments by a solemn benediction, broke the bread and gave it to the deacon, 
who delivered it to the communicants, and next handed them the cup. 
Daring the time of administration, they sang hymns and psalms ; ami 
having concluded with prayer and thanksgiving, the people saluted each 
other with a kiss of peace, and the assembly broke up. In consequence 
of abases which crept in, the parting kiss was discontinued after a 
tim-.' 

". . . . As the churches in North Africa were the first to bring promi- 
nently into notice the necessity of infant baptism, so in connection with 
it they introduced the communion of infants ; for as they neglected to 
distinguish with sufficient clearness between the sign and the divine thing 
which it signified, and as they understood all that is said in the sixth 
chapter of John's gospel concerning eating the flesh and drinking the 
blood of Christ to refer to the outward participation of the Lord's Sup- 
per, they concluded that this, from the earliest age, was absolutely neces- 
sary to the attainment of salvation. 

". . . . The eucharist was generally received once a week, or oftener, 
in the second and third centuries, by the diligent and zealous. Ambrose 
seemed to regard every celebration to be as great a mystery and miracle 
as the incarnation ! The idea being now generally received that this rite 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 313 

was a ' sacrifice/ altars were substituted for tables, and other sacrificial 
appendages followed. Priestcraft found in this idea a strong support, and 
grasped it with eagerness. 

" The sign of the cross was introduced. Pomp and splendor were dis- 
played, and rich vessels of gold and silver were deemed necessary 
articles. The word 'mass' was not known in the primitive Church, nor 
is it found in the works of Augustine, Chrysostom, and other writers of 
the fourth century. They termed the ceremony ' the supper of the Lord,' 
' the mystical supper or table,' ' the eucharist,' * celebration of the sacra- 
ment,' ' the Lord's board,' ' oblation,' i communion,' ' mystery,' etc. Cer- 
tain Christians, called Aqwmi, used water at the eucharist instead of 
wine. The Ebionites did the same. Others used water mingled with 
wine, which was said to denote the union of the Church with Christ. 
This was the general practice. Some substituted milk, honey, or grapes 
for wine. The Ascodnita? and Messalians, or Euchites, held that the 
sacrament of bread and wine did neither good nor harm and rejected its 
use. They subsisted through several hundred years. . . . 

". ... At a council, held in 506, the laity were ordered to com- 
municate three times in a year under penalty of not being reputed 
Catholic Christians. A provincial council at Csesarea Augusta, in 519, 
pronounced a curse upon those receiving the sacrament who ate it not in 
the church. 

" The eucharist had already been administered to infants ; it was now 
given to dead persons. It formed a part of the divine worship, was used 
to consecrate every religious act, and was occasionally celebrated at the 
tombs of martyrs, whence followed masses for the dead. 

" The bread and wine were held up to the view of the people before 
distribution, that they might gaze on it with reverence. The bread was 
usually broken to signify the breaking of the body of Christ. At other 
times it was pierced with a spear and said to be immolated. With the 
remains of the eucharist, and with other oblations, it had long been usual 
to hold occasionally the ' agapa 3 , or feasts of charity,' being a liberal col- 
lation of the rich to feed the poor ; but this practice giving rise to vari- 
ous abuses was prohibited in the sixth and seventh centuries. 

" The Canon of the Mass, instituted by Pope Gregory the Great 
about the year 620, for the celebration of the eucharist, occasioned a re- 
markable change by the ' introduction of a lengthened, pompous, and 
magnificent ritual.' 

" It was still generally performed in the language of each particular 
country, and the first time it was openly said in Latin appears to have 
been at the Council of Constance, by the Pope's legate, in 681. 

" The administration of the sacrament was now deemed the most sol- 
emn and important part of public devotion, and was everywhere embel- 
lished with a variety of senseless appendages. The burning of incense 
received general sanction. Charlemagne made some attempts to stem 
the torrent of superstition, but with little success. 

" To the ceremonies of trying the guilt or innocence of individuals by 
cold water, by single combat, by the fire ordeal, and by the cross, was 
added the celebration of the eucharist, and other rites, to give to these 
barbarisms a religious and imposing aspect. 

" During the same period it was degraded and profaned by being intro- 
duced occasionally into ridiculous and absurd festivals, instituted in imi- 



314 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

tation of the heathen, 'with no higher object than to promote sport and di- 
version at the cost of religion, and even of common decency.* 

". . . . The superstitious custom of performing solitary or secret 
masses by the priest alone, on behalf of souls said to be detained in pur- 
gatory, was introduced by degrees, and proved a rich source of emolument 
to the clergy. There was also the dry mass, without the bread and wine 
or consecration; and the two-fold or three-fold mass, several being 
thrown into one service, and all being celebrated with one canon ; this 
was apparently a device of the priests to save labor. 

" Voluntary oblations of money were sometimes made by those who 
received the sacraments ; the priests were prohibited from encouraging 
this usage, but it became a rule, and was expected as such. In some 
countries it still prevails. The Popish priests do not usually require 
pxyment for the sacraments; they do not sell, but they accept gifts, either 
for themselves, or for some miraculous image, or for the souls in purga- 
tory, for which masses and other oblations are necessary. . . . 

'• A canon of one of the provincial councils enjoined that baptized in- 
fants should receive communion before they partook of any nourishment. 
The priests also were required to administer it in the morning before they 
tasted other food. The practice of giving the bread and wine to chil- 
dren is said not to have been abrogated in France till the twelfth cen- 
tury ; in Germany it was retained later ; and in the Eastern churches it 
is still continued. And great importance was attached to the kind of 
cup used in performing the ceremony. In connection with this, Boni- 
face, the martyr, said, about 750, that formerly golden priests made use of 
wooden cups; but now, on the contrary, wooden priests used golden 
chalices. The Triburentian Council decreed that no priest, by any 
means, presume to make the sacred mystery of the body and blood of our 
Lord in cups or chalices of wood. 

" For a very long period the sacrament of the bread and wine was 
viewed and employed by the great body of Catholics as a sort of charm 
or amulet, to heal bodily diseases in men, or in cattle ; to insure success, 
and avert calamities, as well as to administer truth to the soul. Voy- 
agers carried with them consecrated bread as a pledge for their preserva- 
tion. It was often administered with absolution to the sick or dying, and 
was then termed the viaticum, or provision for their journey into the next 
world. It was sometimes even buried with the corpse. * These notions 
were warmly urged by the corrupt and selfish priests. 

" It had been common to pronounce the consecration of the eucharist 
audibly and intelligibly, that the people might hear, and answer 'Amen/ 
but in the tenth century the contrary practice of ' intonation,' or pronounc- 
ing the services in a low voice, began to be introduced to render them more 
mysterious. 

" It had been the ancient practice for the people, or laity, to partake 
of both the bread and the wine, which was termed 'receiving the sacra- 
ment in both kinds/ but about 1100 was introduced a new custom, which 
in 1414 was solemnly enjoined by the Council of Constance, that the 

* So anti- Christian secret societies (as Masonry, in some of its highest de- 
grees) make an equally profane use of sacraments. — Author. 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 315 

priests should restrict the wine to themselves, and distribute the bread or 
wafer alone to the people. This practice has proved another cause of 
great contention. 

" The oblations of common bread by the people for the purpose of the 
eucharist, having commenced at a very early period, were generally con- 
tinued until the eleventh or twelfth century, when wafers and unleavened 
bread were introduced by the priests, under the plea of decency and re- 
spect, the people being ordered to bring a penny each, instead of the 
former contribution. The Eastern churches still used leavened bread, 
and great disputes followed. In the ancient Church the bread had 
usually been broken into many parts, that each one of the people might 
partake. Afterwards, it was broken by the Greeks into four parts, by the 
Latins into three, and by some other churches into nine parts. 

" The large wafer, or thin, small cake now used in the Romish churches, 
is still broken into three parts, to retain a shadow of the ancient custom, 
but the people generally do not partake. At one time all who attended 
divine worship were expected to share in the eucharist ; but by degrees 
this was relaxed, and those who would not partake of it were allowed a 
sort of consecrated bread, called 'eulogia.' This appears to have been 
introduced in the ninth century. 

"At length arose in the eleventh century the famous controversy 
respecting the manner in which the body of Christ was believed to be 
partaken of in the eucharist. Christian professors had long differed on 
this mysterious subject ; but an opinion gained ground that the figurative 
interpretation ought to be dismissed ; and after the consecration the same 
identical body of Christ, that was born of the Virgin, that suffered upon 
the cross, and that was raised from the dead, was in reality present. 

" Others declared that none but saints and believers received the body 
of Christ in the sacrament ; while a few others held that the bread and 
wine were merely signs and symbols of Christ's absent flesh and blood, 
which were partaken of by faith. This controversy, involving a religious 
and mvsterious question of great moment in their view, was carried on 
very fiercely for some ages between the different parties and their 
leaders. . . . 

"Absolution, or the remission of sins, was generally understood to 
attend the worthy reception of ' the sacrament ; ' these being deemed ' the 
keys' given to Peter and his successors. Salvation was said to be impos- 
sible without a participation in these 'tremendous mysteries;' albeit at 
first the form of absolution was imperative or precative, not indicative 
and absolute. Thus the one great offering was overlooked, and religion 
made a thing of rote, to be shared equally by the righteous and the 
wicked ! 

" It was not until the Council of.Lateran, in 1215, that the great 

question was decided, when Innocent III., that bold and unscrupulous 
pontiff, sanctioned the notion of the ' real presence,' and established the 
term ' transubstantiation,' asserting it in gross and positive terms, as the 
authorized doctrine of the Romish Church. This doctrine teaches the 
duty of paying divine worship to Christ, under the form of the conse- 
crated bread or host (from hostia, a victim), and inculcates the idea of a 
propitiatory sacrifice ; Christ being understood to be truly and properly 
offered up on every occasion of the mass being performed. Who may 
set bounds to the authority of men that declared that they had power to 
produce at their own bidding the Deity himeelf ? 



316 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

" The same Council of Lateran reduced the obligation to receive 
the eucharist to once in the year, at Easter, when every man and every 
woman were enjoined to confess all their sins to the priest. This rule 
was afterwards made canon law. Private and solitary masses soon 
became general, and such continued the state of things till the 
Reformation. 

"A new train of ceremonies and institutions followed the notion of 
transubstantiation, in honor of what was blasphemously called the deified 
bread. Hence arose the customs of kneeling and adoring the sacrament 
or host, which was elevated for the purpose ; and of carrying about this 
' divine bread ' in solemn pomp through the public streets, and with 
lighted candies, though at noon. An annual festival of the holy sacra- 
ment, called ' Corpus Christi,' was instituted by Urban IV., in 1264, giv- 
ing a finishing touch to the highest expression of superstition and 
absurdity. 

" The standing posture was anciently adopted at the reception of the 
bread and wine ; sometimes, however, the communicants knelt. The 
original practice of receiving it when sitting appears to have become 
limited almost to Poland. In the French Reformed Church the com- 
municants stand singly. The ceremony of kneeling was not introduced 
into the Church, say the Puritans, till antichrist was at his full height, 
and there is no one action in the whole service that looks so much like 
idolatry. The Romish priests admit that they should be guilty of idola- 
try in kneeling before the elements, if they did not believe them to be 
the real body and blood of Christ. 

". . . . In consonance with prevailing ideas, Archbishop Peckham en- 
joined, ' The sacrament of the eucharist shall be carried with due rever- 
ence to the sick, the priest having on at least a surplice and stole, with a 
light carried before him in a lantern, with a bell ; and the people, by the 
minister's discretion, shall be taught to prostrate themselves, or, at least, 
to make humble adoration, wheresoever the King of Glory shall happen 
to be carried under the similitude of bread ! ' 

"..... When the doctrine of the corporeal presence was first received 
in the Western Church, the whole loaf was believed to be changed at 
each celebration into.the entire body of Jesus Christ, so that in the dis- 
tribution of parts, one had an eye, another an ear, another a finger, etc., 
etc. ; and this was supported by pretended miracles suited to that opinion. 
Such continued to be the doctrine of the Church of Rome for nearly 
three hundred years. But when the Schoolmen began to sift and form 
the tenets of that Church, they adopted a more refined and subtle way 
of explaining the mystery, and taught that there was an entire body in 
every crumb of bread and in every drop of wine. Wickliffe and others 
showed the absurdity of these gross notions by cogent appeals to plain 
reason. Afterwards Christ's body was, by some, believed to be present 
in the manner of a spirit, wlaioh was only occasionally seen. The more 
superstitious of the people fancied that they must 'see their Maker,' 
according to the common phrase, before they could lie down in peace in 
their beds at night ! Consistently with this coarse, corporeal idea, they 
charged the Protestants with giving the people the creature instead of the 
Creator / From that period, this doctrine, strengthened by the notion 
of the infallibility of the Pope and the Church, has continued to be 
generally held by the Romanists. 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 317 

" Enlightened men, however, testified against it from time to time, 
while infidelity denied it and Christianity for its sake ! Various senti- 
ments, contradictory of each other, continued to be entertained by its 
supporters [and myriads were martyred for not embracing some one or 
other of these conflicting sentiments]. 

" The priests freely acknowledged to Luther the impostures which 
they practised on the vulgar in administering the eucharist — by intro- 
ducing other words in the pretended consecrations, and mixing impious 
jests with the proceedings. Yet so almost incredibly low and gross 
were the notions of even sincere religious people, that Fare], one of the 
French reformers, confesses, ' The wafer which the priest held in his 
hands, placed in the box, and shut up there, being eaten and given to 
others to eat, was to me the true God, and there was no other, either in 
heaven or on the earth.' .... 

"At the Eeformation in the sixteenth century, Luther, whose eyes 
were but partially opened with respect to ceremonies, while he rejected 
the doctrine of transubstantiation, held the opinion, not less incompre- 
hensible, that the partakers of the Lord's Supper received the real body 
and blood of Christ along with the bread and wine. This was termed 
consubstantiation. Occasionally, however, Luther expressed more spiritual 
riews. 

" Calvin believed that the bread and wine were not the actual flesh 
and blood of Christ, but that these were sacramentally received by the 
faithful in the use of the outward elements.* 

" Zwingle and GEcolampadius took much more spiritual views of the 
subject than Luther. They held that the flesh and blood were not really 
present, but that the bread and wine were only external, commemorative 
symbols, designed to excite in the minds of the partakers the remem- 
brance of the sufferings and death of Christ, and of the benefits arising 
therefrom 

" By the corporation and test acts, passed in the reign of Charles II., 
the taking the 'sacrament of the Lord's Supper 5 was made necessary to 
the holding of all places of trust in England and Wales — the object 
being the exclusion of dissenters — an object which was enforced for a 
century and a half. These acts never extended to Scotland. The effect 
in England was to make the ceremony, in many cases, a mere passport 
to office for the unscrupulous and irreligious , 

" The high church notion of self-restricted authority appears in the 
following, under date of 1820 : ' A person not commissioned from the 
bishop may break bread and pour out wine, and pretend to give the 
Lord's Supper ; but it can afford no comfort to receive it at his hands, 
because there is no warrant from Christ to lead communicants to suppose 
that, while he does so here on earth, they will "be partakers in the Saviour's 
heavenly body and blood.' Hence all such observances by non-con- 
formist ministers are vain and fruitless 

" The doctrine of a real presence, the mode mysterious and undefined, 
and beyond all human power of comprehension, is admitted by the 
formularies of the Anglican Church : and this Church, though restricting 
the term ' sacrament ' to two rites, uses three others — confirmation, 
absolution, and ordination — by which (they claim) grace is to be con- 



* What does he mean by Christ being " sacramentally received ? " — Author. 



318 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

veyed; and, therefore, according to her own definition, she virtually 
upholds five sacraments * 

" Great indeed are the difficulties involved in the idea of a permanent 
outward institution. Whatever may be the professed principles of the 
Christian Churches in relation to this rite, it is manifest that it obtains 
less regard than formerly from the religious community at large, and 
has lost much of that superstitious reverence with which it was formerly 
observed. The great majority of the Christian world have long given 
practical evidence that they do not hold it to be essential. The number 
of communicants, as they are termed, when compared with the serious 
and devout worshippers, is in general extremely small. Wide differ- 
ences on the mode, character, and effects of the ceremony, and the 
dreadful persecutions following those differences, have led many to 
balieve that, where there is so much of questioning, discordance, and 
bitterness, the whole matter is open to reasonable doubt. There is too 
much cause to fear that religion itself has been called in question, and 
has lost its hold on the minds of many, on this very ground. Yet re- 
flecting persons oft hesitate to express their doubts, from an unwilling- 
ness either to shock the conscientious convictions of others, or to bring 
upon themselves suspicion and obloquy. They, therefore, merely disuse 
it without undertaking to form a decided opinion, or to judge for others 
respecting it. f 

" Many of them evince that they have submitted to the operation of 
the Holy Spirit on their hearts, and that they fully appreciate the bless- 
ings derived from the offering of Jesus Christ, ' once for all,' for the 
redemption of fallen man. Such doubters are permitted to feed on 
him by living faith, and to hold spiritual communion with him, thus 
partaking of true Christian fellowship and redemption, without the 
medium of the outward ceremony. 

" The reformation from Papal forms must surely be carried further, 

* Yet the Protestant churches in general allow of but two sacraments 
(technically so called), and those of them who observe this sacrament of the 
supper receive the elements only as bread and wine, symbolical of the flesh 
and blood of Christ; and many sects are becoming very irregular in their 
communions, oft omitting it for months and years without compunction, if cir- 
cumstances are unpropitious to its observance. The Papist, on the other 
hand, without the "sacrament" is without the Church and without salvation. 
He receives the elements as transubstantiated into something divine, by the 
consecration of the priest. Hence the necessity that he should be of a separate, 
sanctified class, that he should observe celibacy; and hence the unlimited 
veneration and confidence which he enjoys among the people. Thus is one 
error fruitful in producing and strengthening others. — Author. 

-j- Who is sufficient, with an army of popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, 
clergy, pastors, etc., against him, to form an enlightened opinion upon such a 
disputed question; since at every turn, lo here, lo there, lo this, lo that, is 
shouted in his ear; and he is utterly bewildered, and it requires long and 
unwearied research, in perfect independence of spirit, to unearth the data 
from which a correct conclusion may be reached. — Author. 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 319 

and be suffered to abrogate the two observances still cherished by many 
Protestanrs as sacraments, in the same manner as it has abrogated grosser 
portions of them, and all the five others formerly acknowledged as such. 
Those who observe them are earnestly and respectfully requested to give 
the subject a serious and unprejudiced consideration, with a sincere 
aspiration to be rightly directed by the Holy Spirit." 

Iii the above extract from John Allen, setting forth the 
vagaries, meanderings, and absurdities of sacramentarians, 
who does not recognize the unutterable folly of externalizing 
the Supper of our Lord, and " communion " with Christ ? Not 
less a degradation of Scripture terms is the externalizing of 
Christ's command and teachings respecting baptism. The 
whole Church needs to be rescued from this sacramentarian 
delusion and folly, and from stumbling at that stumbling-stone. 

Alexander Campbell a Witness. 

The great Protestant dissenting ritualist and prince of 
heresiarchs, Alexander Campbell, treating on the theme, 
" Breaking the Loaf," in his work entitled " Principles . . . 
and Positions," makes some remarkable concessions, and is 
forced to admit that no law requiring the eucharist is found in 
the New Testament. One of his concessions is (see p. 331), 
that early Christians, particularly those claiming the greatest 
sanctity, seldom partook of the sacrament — never, except oc- 
casionally, being present at a pascha (passover) ; or, if present 
on other occasions, contented themselves with being spectators 
and not partakers. He also, on the same page, quotes John 
Brown, of Haddington, a Presbyterian professor of theology, 
as inferring from the words of Christ, "As oft as ye do this, do 
it in remembrance of me," that there is no law on the subject, 
and therefore the Church cannot be condemned either for a 
partial or total neglect of the observance. And Mr. Camp- 
bell adds, " If the words 'As oft ' leave it discretionary with 
any society how often, they are blameless if they never once, or 
more than once, in all their lives, show forth the Saviour's 
death. This interpretation [he says] makes an observance 



320 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

ivithout reason, without law, without privilege ! and consequently 
without obligation." 

How Mr. Campbell should necessarily infer that it is 
" without privilege," because without " law " or " obligation," 
does not readily appear, if " privilege " implies option in 
its acceptance or rejection — leaving the invited innocently 
free to either course — to the profit or the loss of either course. 

On pp. 324 and 325 Mr. Campbell's own ritualism stares 
upon us, together with his concession of being " without law " 
on the subject. He says : 

" The congregation in Corinth met every first-day for showing forth the 
Lord's death. From Acts ii. we learn that the breaking of the loaf was a 
stated part and most prominent object of their meeting. [Neander tells us that 
on the first day, near evening, there was a special meeting of Christians for 
a neighborly feast of charity, but not for a sacrament.] . . . We have seen, 
then, that the saints met every first day in Corinth, and when they assembled 
in one place it was to eat the Lord's Supper. . . . Notice what is said, chap, 
xi. 20 : ' When you come together into one place (and act unworthily), this is 
not to eat the Lord's Supper.' When a teacher reproves his pupils for 
wasting time, he cannot remind them more forcibly of the object of their 
coming to school, nor reprove them with more point, than to say, ' When 
you act thus, this is not to assemble to learn.' . . . But it is agreed on all 
hands, that whatsoever the congregations did with the approbation of the 
apostles, they did by their authority. For the apostles gave them all the 
Christian institutions. Now, as the Apostle Paul approbated their meet- 
ing every week, and their coming together into one place to show forth 
the Lord's death, and only censured their departure from the meaning of 
the institution, it is as high authority as we could require. When Acts ii. 
42, xx. 7, 1 Cor. xi. 2, and xvi. 1, 2, are compared together, it appears 
that we act under apostolic teaching and precedent when we assemble 
every Lord's day for the breaking of the loaf. No example can be adduced 
from the New Testament of any Christian congregation assembling on the 
first day of the week unless for the breaking of the loaf and to attend to 
those means of edification and comfort connected with it." 

The above argument of Mr. Campbell is correct as to the 
historic fact that the "first-day" gatherings of the saints, as 
recorded in the New Testament, were oft, at least, for the 
"breaking of bread" to the hungry. And so did they "daily" 
and " from house to house " " break bread," continuing stead- 
fastly in the apostles' doctrine. If the " first-day " breaking 



IS THE LORD ? S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 321 

of bread was a sacrament, " approved " by the apostles because 
historically registered, so were the "daily" ministrations 
sacraments, for they are also approvingly recorded in the New 
Testament history, and deacons were appointed to attend to 
this very matter. Can there be no act, example or ritual 
observed by Christ and the apostles but thereby it is fastened 
on all succeeding ages as a yoke of bondage, requiring servile 
physical imitation ? Reader, what is the freedom of a spir- 
itual dispensation according to this learned interpreter? 

Rev. Jonas King, missionary of the American board in 
Greece and southern Europe, since about A. d. 1830, or earlier, 
thus warns the American churches against form-worship in 
their churches and religious assemblies. It will be seen by 
this extract that he also affirms that the feast called Easter 
is naught but the Jewish Passover continued (which Mosheim 
calls the "Lord's Supper"), and which Dr. King here asserts 
(as do we) was not required, or expected to be observed by 
Christians converted from among the " heathen." 

"lam sorry to be obliged to say, I perceive a tendency to that which 
has been the bane of most of the churches in the eastern world — a tendency 
to forms and ceremonies in the worship of God, to the observance of fast- 
days, so-called, and of feast-days, which were never appointed by God, and 
were not kept by Christians in the first age after Christ — feast-days which 
have in the Eastern churches been productive of great evil by promoting 
idleness and other vices, with which it is usually accompanied. Even the 
passover, improperly translated Easter in the 12th chapter of the Acts of 
the Apostles, was not considered as a feast to be kept by Christian churches 
gathered from among the heathen. An ecclesiastical Greek writer in the 
fifth century says that it was a love of idleness that led many to keep the 
passover (pascha, the word translated, in the 12th chapter of the Acts of the 
Apostles, Easter, but in every other place in the New Testament passover), 
which was a Jewish feast which no Christian was under any obligation to 
keep; and St. Chrysostom said that, every time we partake of the Lord's 
Supper, we celebrate the passover, now generally called here Easter, which 
latter was a heathen festival celebrated in the month of April by northern 
pagans In the Oriental Church it is still called passover. 

" Many, I have no doubt, suppose that Christmas has been kept from the 
time of the apostles, whereas it was not kept in the Eastern Church till the 
fourth century after Christ, and was then introduced from Rome. Of this 
21 



oZj2 eitualism dethroned. 

I have proof from one of the sermons (homilies) of Chrysostom, delivered 
at Antioch about three hundred and eighty years after Christ, in which 
he urged Christians to keep Christmas, and said, ' It is not ten years since 
this day became known to us.' A Greek writer (a bishop) in the seventh 
century declared that no one knows the day, nor even the month, in which 
Christ was born. The twenty-fifth day of December was a heathen feast, 
from the keeping of which it was found difficult to draw Christians ; and 
so it was baptized, if I may so say, with a Christian name, and has since 
been kept by many as a Christian feast, just as the feasts of Bacchus are, 
in substance, still kept by the Greeks, but under a Christian name. 

" Of the various feast-days which many at the present day seem inclined 
to keep, I only mention these two, Christmas and the passover (improperly 
termed Easter), which seem to be the least objectionable of all. As in 
society etiquette and formal visits abound where there is little love or 
friendship, so in religion, where love to God and true piety decrease, there 
is generally a tendency to forms. Having seen the deplorable effect pro- 
duced by the multiplication of forms and ceremonies and feast-days in the 
Eastern Church, I have come to the conclusion that religion as taught in 
the Bible is better than it is as remodelled and taught by men ; and that as 
everything as it comes from the hand of God is very good, we should 
receive religion as he has given it to us, without any addition or diminu- 
tion, though under the appearance of piety. 

" The greater part of the traditions and commandments of men our 
Puritan fathers rejected; and they were called Puritans because they 
wished to receive nothing in religion which is not found and clearly taught 
in the pure word of God. Many of them were men of great talent and 
learning and of ardent piety. Of the name they bore I am not ashamed, 
though I wish to take no other name than that of Christian, according to 
the word of God. And to that word we owe, as a nation, all the civil and 
religious privileges which we now enjoy— all our prosperity and happiness 
hitherto unexampled in any other part of the world. 

" And the mixing of the traditions and commandments of men with the 
pure word of God by the Jews was the primary cause of all their error, 
and the consequent misery brought upon them, and all they have suffered 
in their dispersion among all nations for eighteen hundred years. And 
the mixing of the traditions and commandments of men with the pure word 
of God, by the Christians in the east, was the primary cause of their degra- 
dation and subjection to the Mussulman power for hundreds of years. And 
the degradation of morals among multitudes in the Western Church, and 
the want of civil and religious liberty, may be justly attributed to the same 
cause. And in so far as we see that same cause operating in any other 
church, we have reason to fear its consequences in that church, and its 
influence on society. 

" There is no safety for any individual nor for any church, but in keep- 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 323 

ing close to the pure word of God, and the simplicity of the gospel of 
Jesus Christ. 

" To that simplicity let us all return, if we have in any degree wandered 
from it. Let %s not be allured by pompous ceremonies of any kind, by 
gorgeous dresses, theatrical performances, or enrapturing strains of 
music, to leave the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who, when he 
sent out his disciples to preach the gospel, told them not to take two coats, 
and who himself, when he preached in Judea and Samaria, and till he was 
led out to be crucified, wore as we have reason to believe simple garments 
and a seamless vesture on which the Roman soldiers cast their lots. 

" Simplicity in rites and forms, simplicity in religious worship, simplicity 
in the places where they met for prayer and religious instruction, character- 
ized Christians everywhere in the time of the apostles, and I may say, 
during the greater part of the first century after Christ. And never did 
Christianity appear more lovely, and never was the preaching of the gospel 
more eflicacious in pulling down the strongholds of sin and superstition 
and paganism, than during that period. 

" The vilest of men may be and often are delighted with pompous rites 
and ceremonies, and frequent the churches where such rites and ceremo- 
nies exist as they do the theatre und opera, for mere amusement, without 
receiving the least apparent spiritual benefit. 

" And now, my beloved countrymen, as I am expecting ere long to bid 
my native land once more farewell, and perhaps for the last time and for- 
ever, and return to that land which has been so long the field of my mis- 
sionary labors, I hope you will receive with kindness what I have said on 
a subject which seems to me of great importance. My love for my country 
has never been in the least degree diminished by my distance from it, or 
by length of absence ; on the contrary it has been greatly increased by 
comparing it with other countries through which I have travelled and in 
which I have resided. When in foreign lands, I have often felt as the 
captive Jews did by the rivers of Babylon, and have often said of my 
country as they did of theirs : If I forget thee, O America, let my right 
hand forget its cunning. If I do not remember thee let my tongue cleave 
to the roof of my mouth ; if I prefer not America above my chief joy. 

" I love my countrymen in the east and in the west, in the north and 
in the south, and pray that we may all yet be united in love, and that 
we may all unite in doing good to our fellow -men who do not enjoy the 
civil and religious privileges which we enjoy ; and thus do the work which 
I believe God has raised us up as a nation to perform. 

" With never-failing love, and desire for the peace and prosperity and 
happiness of this great nation, I remain as I ever have been, your fellow- 
citizen,"— Jonas King. 



RITUALISM DETHRONED. 



Henry Ward Beecher on the Lord's Supper. 

I thought I would say a few words this evening, in answer to several 
questions that have been propounded to me on the subject of The Lord's 
/Sapper; or, The Communion of the Last Supper. 

" lou will remember that this very simple and tender service took place 
on the night of the betrayal of our Lord. It was almost the last free act 
of his life. He was on the very edge of the cloud whose bolts were about 
to descend upon his head. The disciples had made preparation, you will 
recollect, being sent by the Master, to celebrate the passover — perhaps the 
most conspicuous and important of the three great festivals which the 
Jews were accustomed to celebrate every year, marking their great national 
release from bondage. And we have a very accurate account, derived 
from authentic Jewish writings, of the whole mode in which the passover 
was accustomed to be celebrated. The paschal supper, the mode of its 
preparation, administration and participation, was all very minutely put 
down in the Jewish books, so that we are not left without a knowledge of 
the particulars of that gathering when Jesus and his disciples sat eating 
the paschal supper. 

" They were all Jews in feeling as well as in nationality. Our Master 
was accustomed to enter into all the proper acts of Jewish worship without 
questioning. He worshipped according to the customs of his own people, 
in the synagogue, everywhere. And he seemed to have a special fondness 
for this passover, to which he went up, several times, from Galilee. 

" They were in the act of eating the passover — the unleavened bread, 
the bitter herbs, and the prepared lamb. Then, at the close of this paschal 
service, the remains being there, the Saviour gave new significance to the 
bread. Handing a fragment to every one that was present, he said, 

" ' This is my body, which is broken for you.' " 

" They came into the meaning of it afterward. 

" And then he took the cup, which had been used already in the Jewish 
passover of the paschal supper, and again gave it to them, as it were a 
fourth time, and said it was his blood shed for them. 

"It will be perceived, therefore, that our Master did not institute this 
service — the communion of the Lord's Supper — as a specialty by itself, 
but that he grafted it upon a service that pre-existed. It is in evidence 
that the early Christians, long before they were formed into any methodi- 
cal and really organized Church, were accustomed to repeat this observ- 
ance every night. It was originally an evening service; and the earliest 
Christian families were accustomed to conclude their evening meal in this 
way: after they had supped, bread was broken, and each took a morsel. 
And then the wine cup was passed, and they drank of that, at the same 
time, reminding each other of the Lord Jesus. 

" This very same mode of celebration continued, although not as often 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT ? 325 

as every day. It seems afterward to have become a weekly service — and 
doubtless for this reason : that the brethren of a neighborhood gathered 
together on one day for religious enjoyment and instruction, and closed 
that public service with this simple administration of the Lord's Supper. 
There was no command that it should be observed every day. There was 
no command that it should be observed every week. There was no com- 
mand that it should be observed at all. It carries with it, evidently, the 
air of expectancy on the part of the Saviour, that his disciples would main- 
tain some such observance ; but how, or under what circumstance, was 
not determined by the Master, and certainly it was not determined in the 
first years of the existence of the Church. And it was celebrated more or 
less frequently just according to circumstances. It was probably more 
than two hundred years before it began to be a sacrament, or a ceremony 
by which men were supposed to swear themselves into the service of 
another. It was full three or four hundred years before it ever began to 
be called an awful service, a solemn service, a service peculiarly filled with 
awe. In the beginning it was an affectionate service ; and in all the earlier 
days of its celebration subsequent to Christ's resurrection, that event seems 
to have thrown such a joy over the minds of his disciples, that even the 
memory of his death was full of exhilaration and joyfulness. They 
believed that death was not able to hold him, but that he lived again ; and 
when they participated in these memorials of his death for them, it was, in 
the earlier historic periods, unquestionably a service of great joyfulness 
and cheerfulness. They congratulated each other, and often exchanged 
the holy kiss in their assemblies. 

"Afterward it became corrupted. It became a sacrament. Men began 
to surround it with various ceremonies. And then they began to teach 
that it was a special channel through which otherwise incommunicable 
blessings were sent down. And then it began to be divided, and the laity 
were not permitted to have anything but the bread— not the cup at all. 
Then it began to be taught that the Lord's body and blood were absolutely 
in the bread and wine ; and that they who participated in the bread took, 
actually, the Lord Jesus Christ physically, and the whole of him— each 
one the whole, and other such monstrous teachings. 

" In the beginning, then, it was simply a service of love, and a memorial 
service at that. But the sign, the token, the remembrance, does not itself 
do anything. And so the bread and the wine symbols. They stand 
between the soul of Christ's disciple and Christ himself, and point the one 
up to the other, for the simple sake of keeping alive personal affection — 
a sense of personal love. The whole of Christianity may be said to be 
this love between the sinful soul and the ever blessed Saviour. 

" ' The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, that if one 
died for all, then were all dead : and that he died for all, that they which 
live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died 
for them.' " 



326 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

" It is this yearning of Christ to be loved, to be remembered in love, that 
was the occasion of his instituting this simple memorial service. That is 
what it meant ; that is what it still means. 

" In the early church, the Lord's Supper was administered by every per- 
son himself. Persons sat about the table, and each, himself, took the 
bread and wine; but when many families began to meet together, that 
became inconvenient. They could not all sit about a table. It was a 
service in the congregation ; and then it was more convenient that there 
should be officers appointed to pass the elements. This mode was adopted 
as being shorter and more facile. But the right to the Lord's Supper is 
not conferred by the officers of the church, nor by the church itself, on 
anybody. The right to the Lord's Supper belongs to every soul that loves 
the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not mine to give to you. I have nothing to 
give. I am to be your servant in administering it. The church may 
facilitate the administration of it, and make it an orderly service ; but the 
church does not own the Lord's Supper, and the church does not give 
anybody the right to it. You have a right to spread your table in your 
own house, as the primitive Christians did, and to break the bread in the 
name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The father of a family has~a right to do 
it for his wife and for his children. And he has a right to take the cup 
and administer the wine to them. Under such circumstances it is the 
Lord's Supper administered by your own self. You do not need ordina- 
tion and permission to qualify you to administer it to yourselves or to 
others. The right is inherent in every one who is a true disciple of the 
Lord. 

" The Roman Church once said that the Bible belonged to the church, 
and it was administered by the priest ; but the Protestants threw off that 
shackle, and said that the Bible was everybody's. And now each man 
owns his own Bible. And it is just the same with ordinances as it is with 
the Bible. There was no church to give them to men ; and when the Lord 
Jesus Christ instituted them, they were given to his followers and to every 
individual among them." 

Who can be wholly consistent ? Mr. Beecher can deny at 
one breath a " command " to observe the " Supper," and at 
the next, talk about an " institution " and the freedom and 
sovereignty each individual for himself possesses relative to 
" ordinances." We presume he uses these terms in this way 
because it is the customary dialect of the churches. We know 
that he disowns any bondage to ordinances. See what he 
says elsewhere respecting baptism. 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 327 

Pres. E. G. Robinson's (Baptist) Testimony respect- 
ing the Supper. 

It may be here stated as one of the hopeful results of the 
recent discussion respecting the conditions or terms of Chris- 
tian fellowship, and especially of the supposed obligations and 
limits of sacramental communion, that not only so prominent 
a religious teacher as H. W. Beecher has denied that a verita- 
ble sacramental law has been imposed on the Christian Church, 
but also a widely known teacher, at the head of the leading 
Baptist theological seminary in the land, Rev. E. G. Robinson, 
D. D., LL. D., President of Brown University, Providence, 
R. I., has come before the public with a discourse in which he 
asserts that the communion of saints around what is termed 
the " Lord's table " is not a command of Christ binding on the 
Christian Church, but is a purely voluntary memorial of 
Christ's redeeming work and love, and is to be observed only 
at the option of each congregation or company of Christian 
believers ; and that the antecedents of such commemoration 
must also be optional, i. e., decided in the exercise of Christian 
freedom. 

The "Episcopalian" touching the Origin of 
Sacraments. 

Wherein does the above teaching differ from that of the 
Reformed or Evangelical Episcopalians, as set forth in the 
" Episcopalian" commenting upon certain articles found in the 
" Reformed Church Monthly" ? Hear it : 

" Our Protestant brethren of the Reformed Church are pestered with the 
same errors of doctrine which have disturbed our church peace, and have 
led away multitudes of our people after them. A series of articles exposing 
the Nevinite errors of sacramental grace, which are essential Popery, is 
passing through the ' Monthly? and they contain some startling exposures. 
The doctrine of baptismal regeneration is clearly stated thus, p. 401 : ' It 
is the doctrine that the grace of baptism consists in an emanation from the 
substance of God transmitted to the soul of the child or adult baptized, 
through baptism as the organic channel.* We agree with the writer when 



328 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

he says that doctrine ' calls forth our opposition and condemnation. This 
doctrine we pronounce unscriptural, contrary to the established faith of 
the Reformed Church (and of every Protestant Church), and very hurtful 
in its tendencies.' He adds, 'to sacramental grace, in the gospel sense, 
■we hold.' But there is no gospel sense of that grace ; there are no sacra- 
ments in the gospel. That word is a military, ecclesiastical, and mislead- 
ing term, and it cannot be redeemed. They are ordinances of religion 
of a purely symbolical kind, and they are means of grace, like prayer, 
praise, and preaching, in no other way, and in no other sense. Baptism 
and the Lord's Supper are subject to the same laws as are any other means 
of grace. In regard to importance, an inspired pen puts baptism so far 
below preaching the truth of Christ that the writer (St. Paul) omitted it, 
and rarely administered it. Our brethren had better get rid of the unscrip- 
tural term, and that will help to banish the false doctrine. Jehovah forbid 
his people to take the name of heathen gods in their mouths, and so should 
his enlightened people decline to take the nomenclature of false doctrine 
in their mouths. Call them what the apostle calls them, Ordinances. We 
would do all we can to encourage the true Protestants and representatives 
of the Reformed Church to banish all false, patristic, pantheistic, and 
Popish errors from their Church. But this is the day of ' the great falling 
away,' and ' many shall be tried, and purified, and made white.' ' When 
the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth ? ' ' Hold fast the 
truth, that no man take thy crown.' " 

Joseph John Gurney (an eminent Minister of 
the Society of Friends) thus writes respecting 
Christ's Last Passover Supper : 

" I. When the Lord Jesus celebrated his last passover supper with his 
disciples, ' he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and 
said, Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you; this do in 
remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when 
he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood : this do 
ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.' 

" II. The words used by our Lord on this solemn occasion afford no 
more evidence that the bread which he brake was itself his body than they 
do that the cup which he held in his hand was itself the new testament 
in his blood. The bread was distinct and separate from his body, occupy- 
ing a different part of space, and could not possibly be the same with it. 
But the bread represented his body, which was about to be broken for 
many ; and the wine in the cup was a symbol of his blood which was about 
to be shed for many, for the remission of sins. 

" III. It was at an actual meal, intended for bodily refreshment, that our 
Saviour thus addressed his disciples ; and when, in conformity with his 
command, the earliest Christians partook of the c Lord's Supper,' there was 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 329 

no mystery in the observance ; much less was any miraculous change 
wrought upon their food. Convened from time to time, at their social 
repasts, they brake their bread, and handed round their cup of wine, in 
the sweet fellowship of the gospel of Christ, and in solemn remembrance 
of his death. 

" IV. The Scriptures do not appear to afford us any sufficient proof that 
the command on which this custom was founded was intended for the 
whole Church of Christ in all ages, any more than our Lord's injunction to 
his disciples to wash one another's feet. There is nothing however in the 
practice itself, as it was thus observed by the primitive believers, incon- 
sistent with the general law, that all mere types and figures in worship are 
abolished under the gospel. Let Christians, when they eat their meat 
together ' with gladness and singleness of heart,' still be reminded, by their 
very food, of the Lord who bought them. Let them, more often than the 
day, gratefully recollect their Divine Master, ' who bare our sins in his own 
body, on the tree,' and whose precious blood was shed for all mankind. 

" V. But no sooner was this practice changed from its original simple 
character, employed as a part of the public worship of God, and converted 
into a purely ceremonial rite, than the state of the case was entirely altered. 
The great principle that God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth was 
infringed ; and, as far as relates to this particular, a return took place to 
the old legal system of forms and shadows. 

u VL It is probably in consequence of this change — the invention and 
contrivance of man — that an ordinance, of which the sole purpose was the 
thankful remembrance of the death of Jesus, has been abused to an aston- 
ishing extent. Nothing among professing Christians has been perverted 
into an occasion of so much superstition ; few things have been the means 
of staining the annals of the Church with so much blood. 

" VIL ' It is the Spirit that quickeneth/ as our Saviour himself has taught 
us, ' the flesh prqfiteth nothing ; ' and Christianity is distinguished by a 
spiritual supper, as well as baptism. To partake of this supper is essential 
to our salvation. We can never have a claim on the hopes and joys set 
before us in the gospel unless we feed, by a living faith, on the bread 
which came down from heaven, and g.iveth life to the world— unless we 
'eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood.' Now they who 
partake of this celestial food are fellow-members of one body; they are 
joined together by a social compact of the dearest and holiest character, 
beeause they all commune with the same glorious Head. They are one in 
Christ Jesus ; and when they meet in solemn worship — Christ himself being 
present— they are guests, even here, at the table of their Lord, and drink 
the wine * new,' with him 'in his kingdom.' 

" May this be the happy experience of all who read this volume, whether 
tKpjr nse or disuse what is called the sacrament of the supper ! " 



330 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

Thomas Clarkson, of the Church of England, 
stating and endorsing the friends' vlew of the 
Lord's Supper. 

" There are two suppers of the Lord recorded in the Scriptures ; the first 
enjoined by Moses, and the second by Jesus Christ. 

" The first is called the Supper of the Lord, because it was the last supper 
which Jesus Christ participated with his disciples, or which the Lord aui 
Master celebrated with them in commemoration of the passover. And it 
may not improperly be called the Supper of the Lord on another accoun', 
because it was the supper which the lord and master of every Jewish 
family celebrated, on the same festival, in his own house. 

" This supper was distinguished, at the time alluded to, by the name of 
the passover supper. The object of the institution of it was to commemo- 
rate the event of the Lord passing over the houses of the Israelites in 
Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered the former from their 
hard and oppressive bondage. 

" The directions of Moses concerning this festival were short, but 
precise. 

" On the fourteenth day of the first month, called Nisan, the Jews 
were to kill a lamb in the evening. It was to be eaten in the same even- 
ing, roasted with fire ; and the whole of it was to be eaten, or the remains 
of it to be consumed with fire before morning. They were to eat it with 
loins girded, with their shoes on their feet, and with their staves in their 
hands, and to eat it in haste. The bread, which they were to eat, was to 
be unleavened, all of it, and for seven days. There was to be no leaven in 
their houses during that time. Bitter herbs also were to be used at this 
feast. And none, who were uncircumcised, were allowed to partake of it. 

" This was the simple manner in which the passover and the feast of 
unleavened bread (which was included in it) were first celebrated. But 
as the passover, in the age following its institution, was not to be killed 
and eaten in any other place than where the Lord chose to fix his name, 
which was afterwards at Jerusalem, it was suspended for a time. The 
Jews, however, retained the festival of unleavened bread wherever they 
dwelt. At this last feast, in process of time they added the use of wine to 
the use of bread. The introduction of the wine was followed by the intro- 
duction of new customs. The lord or master of the feast used to break the 
bread, and to bless it, saying, ' Blessed be thou, O Lord, who givest us the 
fruits of the earth ! ' He used to take the cup, which contained the wine, 
and bless it also : ' Blessed be thou, O Lord, who givest us of the fruit of 
the vine ! ' The bread was twice blessed upo» this occasion, and given 
once to every individual at the feast. But the cup was handed round 
three times to the guests. During the intervals between the blessing and 
taking of the bread and of the wine, the company acknowledge the deliver- 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 331 

ance of their ancestors from the Egyptian bondage ; they lamented their 
present state ; they confessed their sense of the justice of God in their pun- 
ishment ; and they expressed their hope of his mercy, from his former 
kind dealings and gracious promises. 

" In process of time, when the Jews were fixed at Jerusalem, they 
revived the celebration of the passover ; and as the feast of unleavened 
bread was connected with it, they added the customs of the latter, and 
blended the eating of the lamb, and the use of the bread and wine, am. 
their several accompaniments of consecration, into one ceremony. The 
bread therefore and the wine had been long in use as constituent parts of 
the passover supper (and indeed of all the solemn feasts of the Jews), 
when Jesus Christ took upon himself, as the master of his own family of 
disciples, to celebrate it. When he celebrated it, he did as the master of 
every Jewish family did at that time. He took bread, and blessed, and 
broke, and gave it to his disciples, fie took the cup of wine, and gave it 
to them also. But he conducted himself differently from others in one 
respect; for he compared the bread of the passover to his own body, and 
the wine to Iiis own blood, and led the attention of his disciples from the 
old object of the passover, or deliverance from Egyptian bondage, to anew 
one, or deliverance from sin." .... 

" The first conclusion which the Friends deduce on this subject is, that 
this flesh and blood, or this bread, or this meat, which he recommends to 
his followers, and which he also declares to be himself, is not of a material 
nature. It is not, as he himself says, like the ordinary meat that perisheth, 
not like the outward manna, which the Jews ate in the wilderness for their 
bodily refreshment. It cannot therefore be common bread, nor such bread 
as the Jews ate at their passover, nor any bread or meat ordered to be 
eaten on any public occasion. 

" Neither can this flesh or this bread be, as some have imagined, the 
material flesh or body of Jesus. Fcr, first, this latter body was born of the 
Virgin Mary : whereas the other is described as having come down from 
heaven. Secondly, because, when the Jews said, ' How can this man give 
us his flesh?' Jesus replied, 'It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh 
profiteth nothing ; ' that is, Material flesh and blood, such as mine is, can- 
not profit anything in the way of quickening, or cannot so profit as to give 
life eternal : this is only the work of the Spirit. And he adds, ' The words 
I have spoken to you, they are spirit, and they are life.' 

"This bread then, or this body, is of a spiritual nature. It is of a 
spiritual nature, because it not only giveth life but preserveth from death. 
Manna, on the other hand, supported the Israelites only for a time, and 
they died. Common bread and flesh nourish the body for a time, and it 
dies and perishes ; but it is said of those, who feed upon this food, that they 
shall never die. 

"This bread or body must be spiritual again, because the bodies of men, 
according to their present organization, cannot be kept forever alive. 



332 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

But their souls may. The souls of men can receive no nourishment from 
ordinary meat and drink, that they should be kept alive, but from that 
which is spiritual only. It must be spiritual again, because Jesus Christ 
describes it as baring come down from heaven. 

" The last conclusion, which the Friends draw from the words of our 
Saviour on this occasion, is, that a spiritual participation of the body and 
blood of Christ is such an essential of Christianity, that no person, who 
does not partake of them, can be considered to be a Christian ; ' for, except 
a man eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, he has no life 
in him.' " . . . . 

" Neither does St. Luke, who mentions the words, ' Do this in remem- 
brance of me,' establish anything, in the opinion of the Friends, material 
on this point. For it appears from him that Jesus, to make the most of 
his words, only spiritualized the old passover for his disciples, all of whom 
were Jews, but that he gave no command with respect to the observance 
of it by others. Neither did St. Luke himself enjoin or call upon others to 
observe it. 

" St Paul speaks nearly the same language as St. Luke, but with this 
difference, that the supper, as thus spiritualized by Jesus, was to last but 
for a time. 

u Now the Friends are of opinion, that they have not sufficient ground 
to believe, from these authorities, that Jesus intended to establish any 
ceremonial as an universal ordinance for the Christian Church.* For, if 
the eustoni enjoined was the spiritualized passover, it was better calculated 
for Jews than, for Gentiles, who were neither interested in the motives nor 
acquainted with the customs of that feast. But it is of little importance, 
they contend, whether it was the spiritualized passover or not; for, if Jesus 
Christ had intended it, whatever it was, as an essential of his new religion, 
he would have commanded his disciples to enjoin it as a Christian duty 
and the disciples themselves would have handed it down to their several 
converts in this light. But no injunction to this effect, either of Jesus to 
others, or of themselves to others, is to be found in any of their writings. 
Add to this, that the limitation of its duration for a time seems a sufficient 
argument against it as a Christian ordinance, because whatever is once, 
must be for ever, an essential in the Christian Church. 

" The Friends believe, as a further argument in their favor, that there 
is reason to presume that St. Paul never looked upon the spiritualized 

* The extraordinary silence of St. John on this subject is considered by 
some as confirming the idea, that this evangelist himself believed that the 
passover, as spiritualized by Jesus Christ, was to cease with the Jewish con- 
stitution, or after the destruction of Jerusalem. For St. John did not write 
bis gospel till after this great event. But if he thought the ceremonial was 
then to cease, he would have had less reason for mentioning it than any of 
those who wrote prior to this epoch. 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 333 

passover, as any permanent and essential rite, which Christians were 
enjoined to follow. For nothing can be more clear than that, when 
speaking of the guilt and hazard of judging one another by meats and 
drinks, he states it as a general and fundamental doctrine of Christianity, 
that the ' kingdom of God is not meat and drink, bnt righteousness, peace, 
and joy in the Holy Ghost.' 

" It seems also by the mode of reasoning which the apostle adopts in 
the Epistle to the Corinthians on this subject, that he had no other idea 
of the observance of this rite than he had of the observance of particular 
days ; namely, that if men thought they were bound in conscience to keep 
them, they ought to keep them religiously. ' Pie that regardeth a day/ 
says the apostle, ' regardeth it to the Lord : ' that is, ' He that esteemed a 
day,' says Barclay, ' and placed conscience in keeping it, was to regard it 
to the Lord (and so it was to him, in so far as he regarded it to the Lord, 
the Lord's day) : he was to do it worthily ; and if he were to do it unwor- 
thily, he would be guilty of the Lord's day, and so keep it to his own con- 
demnation.' Just in the same manner, St. Paul tells the Corinthian Jews, 
that if they observed the ceremonial of the passover, or rather, ' as often 
as they observed it,' they were to observe it worthily, and make it a 
religious act. They were not then come together to make merry on the 
anniversary of the deliverance of their ancestors from Egyptian bondage, 
but to meet in memorial of Christ's sufferings and death. And therefore, 
if they ate and drank the passover, under its new and high allusions, un- 
worthily, they profaned the ceremony, and were guilty of the body and 
blood of Christ. 

" It appears also from the Syriac and other oriental versions of the New 
Testament, such as the Arabic and Ethiopic, as if he only permitted the 
celebration of the spiritualized passover for a time, in condescension to the 
weakness of some of his converts, who were probably from the Jewish 
synagogue at Corinth. For in the seventeenth verse of the eleventh 
chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, the Syriac runs thus: 'As 
to that, concerning which I am now instructing you, I commend you not, 
because you have not gone forward, but you have gone down into matters 
of less importance.' It ' appears from hence,' says Barclay, ' that the 
apostle was grieved, that such was their condition, that he was forced to 
give them instruction concerning those outward things, and doting upon 
which they showed that they were not gone forward in the life of Chris- 
tianity, but rather sticking in the beggarly elements.' And therefore the 
twentieth verse of the same version has it thus : ' When then ye meet 
together, ye do not do it, as it is just ye should in the day of the Lord ; ye 
eat and drink.' Therefore showing to them, that to meet together to eat 
and drink outward bread and wine was not the labor and work of that day 
of the Lord. 

" Upon the whole, in whatever light the Friends view the subject before 
us, they cannot persuade themselves that Jesus Christ intended to establish 



334 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

any new ceremonial distinct from the passover supper, and in addition to 
that, which he had before commanded at Capernaum. The only supper 
which he ever enjoined to Christians was the latter. This spiritual supper 
was to be eternal and universal. For he was always to be present with 
those 'who would let him in, and they were to sup with him, and he with 
them.' It was also to be obligatory, or an essential, with all Christians. 
1 For, except a man were to eat his flesh and to drink his blood, he was to 
have no life in him.' The supper, on the other hand, which our Saviour 
is supposed to have instituted on the celebration of the passover, was not 
enjoined by him to any but the disciples present. And it was, according 
to the confession of St. Paul, to last only for a time. This time is univer- 
sally agreed upon to be that of the coming of Christ. That is, the dura- 
tion of the spiritualized passover was to be only till those, to whom it had 
been recommended, had arrived at a state of religious manhood, or till 
they could enjoy the supper, which Jesus Christ had commanded at Caper- 
naum; alter which repast, the Friends believe, they would consider all 
others as empty, and as not having the proper life and nourishment in 
them, and as of a kind not to harmonize with the spiritual nature of the 
Christian religion." 

Earlier Witnesses protesting against this Sacra- 
ment of the Supper, 
from john allen's "state churches." 

" Berenger, who died in 1088, took a more spiritual view of the Lord's 
Supper than most of the ruling men of his day, though many others agreed 
with him. ' Christ,' said he, ' does not descend from heaven, but the 

hearts of the faithful ascend devotionally to him in heaven The true, 

the imperishable body of Christ is eaten only by the true members of 
Christ in a spiritual manner.' It was a favorite maxim of his, ' Though 
we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now, henceforth, know Ave him 
thus no more.' 

' : Peter de Bruis, Abbot of Chigny, with Henry, his disciple, and their 
followers, about the same time, held, not only, with Berenger, that there is 
no change of substance in the sacrament, but also that it is no longer to 
be administered. Peter de Bruis was burnt at St. Giles, Languedoc. This 
was the usual end of such as ventured to dissent from the gross ideas up- 
held by the priests, and by arbitrary authority in church and state. 

"A hermit, disputing in St. Paul's Church (London), about 1306, affirmed 
that the sacraments then used in the church were not instituted by Christ. 
John Fox supposes this to have been one Ranulphus, mentioned in the 
' Flower of History,' who died in prison. 

" The author of ' Ploughman's Complaint ' thus writes : ' Ah, Lord 
Jesus ! whether thou ordainest an order of priests to offer on the altar thy 
flesh and thy blood, or whether any other man may do so without leave of 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 335 

the priest — Lord, we believe that thy flesh is very meat, and thy blood very 
drink, and whoso eateth thy flesh and drinketh thy blood dwelleth in thee 
and thou in. him ; and he that eateth this bread shall live without end. 
But Lord, thy disciples said, "this is a hard word; " but thou answerest 
them, " The Spirit it is thatinaketh you alive ; the words that I have spoken 
unto you are spirit and life." Lord, blessed mayest thou be; for in this 
word thou teachest us that he that keepeth thy words and doeth them, 
eateth thy flesh, and drinketh thy blood, aud hath everlasting life in 
thee.' 

" ' Hocus pocus ' is said to have been the mocking phrase of the common 
people in derision of the Papal ceremony of transmuting the bread, it being 
a corruption or abbreviation of the words, ' Hoc est corpus ' (this is my 
body). 

' ; Some of the priests confessed that they had so little faith in the trans- 
mutation, that they used, at times, to say in derision, ' Panis est, et panis 
manebis— bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain/ 

" In her early days, Queen Elizabeth, perceiving the falsity of the preten- 
sions of the Papal priests, evaded the questions of her Popish examiner 
respecting the sacrament, in the'followlng epigrammatic style : 

" ' Christ was the word, and spake it, 
He took the bread, and brake it, 
And what his word did make it, 
That I receive, and take it.' 

" Philip Repington, in his public examination, declared that, as touch- 
ing the sacrament, he would hold his peace until such time as the Lord 
should otherwise illuminate the minds of the clergy. He was afterwards, 
however, prevailed upon to adopt the Romish doctrines, and at length be- 
came a cardinal ! 

" Walter Brute, before quoted, who lived about 1405, had very clear 
and spiritual views on the communion of the body and blood of Christ. 
He thus discourses : ' I believe and know that Christ is the true bread of 
God, which descended from heaven, and giveth life to the world. Of 

which bread whosoever eateth shall live forever By the faith 

which we have in Christ as the true Son of God, who came down from 
heaven to redeem us, we are justified from sin, and so live by him 

which is the true bread and meat of the soul As we believe that he is 

true God, so must we believe that he is a true man, and then do we eat the 
bread of heaven and the flesh of Christ. Except we thus eat the flesh of the 

Son of man, and drink his blood, ive have not eternal life in us But 

the priests be greatly deceived, and greatly deceive others ; for the people 
believe that they see the body of Christ, nay, rather Christ himself, between 
the hands of the priests, for so is the common oath they swear : " By Him 
whom I saw this day between the priest's hands." And they believe 
that they eat not the body of Christ but at Easter, or when they lie upon 



336 RITUALISM DETHEOXED. 

their death-beds, and receive with their bodily mouths the sacrament of 
his body. But since the body of Christ is the soul's food, and not the food of 
the body in this world, whosoever believeth doth eat spiritually and really, 
at any time when he so believeth ; and it is manifest that they do greatly 
err, who believe that they eat not the body of Christ but when they eat 
with their teeth the sacrament of his body. The priests, therefore, are in 
great peril, most dangerously seducing themselves and the people.' 

" William Thoep, of Shrewsbury, being examined before Archbishop 
Arundel, about the same time, as to his faith, thus answered: 'I said to 
the people, "The virtue of the most holy sacrament of the altar standeth 
much more in the belief thereof that you ought to have in your soul than 
in the outward sight thereof. And therefore ye were better to stand still 
quietly to hear God's word, because through the hearing thereof men come 
to very true belief. . . . They that come to church to pray devoutly to the 
Lord, may in their inward wits be more fervent, that their outward Avits 
be closed from ail outward seeing and hearing, and from all disturbance 
and lettings. . . . No one needs to be afraid to die without taking any 
sacrament of those enemies of Christ (the priests) since Christ himself will 
not fail to minister all sacraments, lawful, healthful and necessary, at all 
times, und especially at the end, to all them that are in true faith, in 
steadfast, hope and perfect charity." ' The archbishop and priests were 
very bitter against him, and he is supposed to have died in prison. 

"Ten persons, mostly of Tenterden, in Kent, were compelled, in 1511, 
to abjure the following among other supposed errors : ' That the sacra- 
ments are not necessary or profitable for men's souls; that holy water and 
holy bread are not better after benediction by the priest than before.' 
Many others, adhering to their opinions, were burnt about the same time, 
as obstinate heretic?. Elizabeth Stamford, being examined before the 
Bishop of London, confessed thus : ' Christ feedeth and nourisheth his 
church with his own precious body, — that is the bread of life coming down 
from heaven ; this is the worthy word that is worthily received, and joined 
unto man to be in one body with him. Sooth it is, that they be both one, 
that they may not be parted. 

" ' This is the wisely deeming of the holy sacrament, Christ's own body ; 
this is not received by chewing of teeth, but by hearing with ears, and un- 
derstanding with your soul, and wisely working thereafter.'' 

" Martin Luther, when in his right mind, giving free course to the 
Spirit, and unbiased by his fear of a separation from the Papacy, could 
write thus : ' If divers men should use a diverse rite, let not one judge or 
contemn another, but let every one abound in his own sense; and let us 
all savor and judge the same things, though in forms we act diversely ; 
for outward rites, as we cannot want them either as meat and drink, so 
neither do they commend us to God, but only faith and love commend us to 
him. Therefore let Paul be heard here, that the kingdom of God is not 
meat and drink, but righteousness, peace and joy iu the Holy Spirit. And 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 337 

so no rite nor form is the kingdom of God, but faith within us. . . . The 
better part of every sacrifice, and consequently of the Lord's Supper, is in 
the word and the promises of God. Without faith in this word and in 
these promises, the sacrament is but dead. It is a body without a soul, a 
cup without wine, a purse without money, a type without fulfilment, a let- 
ter without meaning, a casket without jewels, a sheath without a sword. 
. . . The priests may deny us the sacrament, but they cannot deprive us of 
the strength and grace which God hath attached to it. It is not their will 
nor any power of theirs, but our own faith that the Lord has made essen- 
tial to salvation. The sacrament, the altar, the priest, the Church, we may 
pass them all by ; that word of God, which the bull of the Pope con- 
demned, is more than all these things. The soul may dispense with the 
sacrament, but it cannot live without the word. Christ, the true Bishop, 
will himself supply your spiritual feast.' 

" GZcolampaditjs, at a conference in 1527, says : ' Christ, who said to the 
people of Capernaum, " the flesh profiteth nothing," rejected by those very 
words the oral manducation or chewing of his body, therefore he did not 
establish it at the institution of his supper. There is danger in attributing 
too much to mere matter ; — since we have the spiritual eating, what need of 
the bodily one f ' 

" So Zwingle remarks to Luther, ' Jesus says, that to eat his flesh cor- 
poreally profiteth nothing ; whence it would result that if outwardly eaten 
he had given us in the supper a thing that would be useless to us. The 
soul is fed Avith the spirit, and not with the flesh. Christ's body is, accord- 
ing to you, a corporeal and not a spiritual nourishment. You are thus re- 
establishing Popery.' 

"William Tyndal, the martyr, declared that it were better to receive 
neither of the parts of the sacrament than one only, as practised in the 
Romish Church.* It was frequently expressed by him and other reformers, 
that the ceremonies of the Church had brought the world frojn God ! Said 
they, ' By works, superstitions and ceremonies, we decay from the faith, 
which alone doth truly justify and make holy.' 

"John Frith, one of the English martyrs in Queen Mary's reign, said : 
1 The ancient fathers before Christ never believed the gross and carnal 
eating of Christ's body ; yet notwithstanding, they did eat him spiritu- 
ally, and were saved; as Adam, Abraham, Moses, etc., all of whom ate the 
body of Christ, and drank his blood, as we do. They were all " under the 
cloud," and drank of the Rock which followed them. " That Rock was 
Christ." Moses also prefigured him by divers means, both by the manna 
which came down from heaven, and also by the water which issued out 
of the rock ; nor is it to be doubted that the manna and the water had a 
prophetical mystery in them.' 

* By thus canvassing the comparative value of the sacrament in both parts, 
or neither, it would seem that all could see the utter worthlessness of sacra* 
ments. — Author. 
22 



338 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

"JOHN Lambert, another of the martyrs, expressed himself thus : ' God 
sendeth his grace where and when he pleaseth, either with the sacraments 
or without them ; so that it is at his arbitrament how and when. More- 
over, many lewd persons, destitute of grace, receive the sacraments to their 
confusion ; so that I cannot affirm that they give grace ; yet in due re- 
ceipt of them, I suppose and think that God giveth grace, as he doth to all 
good persons even without them also.' 

" The rubric of Edward VI. required all married persons to receive the 
holy sacrament on the day of their marriage; afterward it was changed to 
the form now in force, that they should do it on that day, or at the first 
opportunity afterwards; and required each parishioner to communicate 
at least ' three times in a year.' This, however, has fallen into disuse. 
In a letter to Bishop Ridley, Edward states that ' most of the altars in the 
churches had been already taken down/ and he orders that the rest be re- 
moved, and instead thereof, a table be set up in some convenient part of 
the chancel, for the ministration of the blessed communion, since, contrary 
to the Popish notion,- ' no sacrifice is offered in the sacrament, and a table 
is the most suitable to the occasion ! ' 

" Dr. Redman, an early English Protestant, being asked in the time of 
his illness, whether he thought that the very body of Christ was received 
with the mouth or not, paused and held h's peace awhile, and then replied, 
' I will not say so ; I cannot tell ; it is a hard question ; but surely we re- 
ceive Christ in the soul by faith. "When you speak of it otherwise, it 
soundeth grossly.' His friend replied, ' I am glad to hear you say so 
much. I fear lest that sacrament, and a little piece of white bread lifted 
up, hath robbed Christ of a great part of his honor.' Then said the sick 
man, looking upward, ' God grant us grace, that we may have true under- 
standing of his word.'* 

" Two French martyrs at Samserre, declaring that the mass was mere su- 
perstition and idolatry, said that, to attribute any part of salvation thereto, 
was ' utterly to destroy the benefits of the sufferings of Christ, and ought 
not to be named by a Christian man ! ' 

" In a conference between Ridley and Bourne, the former, a well-known 
and illustrious Protestant martyr, expresses himself thus : ' When you hear 
God's word truly preached, if you believe in it, and abide in it, ye shall 
and do receive life withal ; and if ye do not believe it, it doth bring unto 
you death. And yet Christ's body is still in heaven, and not carnal in 
every preacher's mouth.' Thus he showed that the participation in an 
outward rite is not necessary in order to partake of the body and blood of 
Christ. 

* In the life of Gregory the Great, it is related that a certain woman, when 
he gave her the encharist with the words, "the body of our Lord Jesus Christ 
preserve thy soul," laughed at the form, and when asked the reason, she re- 
plied, because he called that the body of Christ, which she knew to be bread 
that she had made with her own hands a little while before. 



IS THE LORD'S SUPPER A SACRAMENT? 339 

" Robert Smith, of Windsor, another of those who proved by death the 
sincerity of their Christian faith, was asked at his examination before 
Bishop Bonner, how long it had been since he received the sacrament of 
the altar. His answer was, ' I never received the same since I had 
years of discretion, nor ever will, by God's grace. Neither do I esteem 
the same in any point, because it hath not God's ordinance, either in name 
or in other usage, but rather is erected to mock God.' Bonner replied, 
' Do ye not believe that it is the very body of Christ, that was born of the 
Virgin Mary, really, naturally, and substantially, after the words of conse- 
cration?' Robert Smith replies, 'I showed you before it was none of 
God's ordinances, as ye use it; then much less is it God, or any part of his 
substance, but only bread and wine, erected to the use aforesaid. Yet if ye 
can prove it by the word to be the body that ye .spake of, I will believe it ; 
if not, I will, as I do, account it a detestable idol, not God, but contrary to 
him and his truth.' After many raging words and vain objections, Bonner 
said there was no remedy, but he must be burned. Smith replies, ( Ye 
shall do no more unto me than ye have done to better men than either of 
\is, but think not thereby to quench the Spirit of God, nor to make your 
matter good ; for your sore is too well seen to be healed so privily with 
blood, for even the very children have your deeds in derision. '* 

" John Philpot, another eminent martyr, being examined by the 
Bishop of London and others, protested thus : ' There be two things, prin- 
cipally, by which the clergy of this day deceive the whole realm ; that is 
the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, and the name of the Cath- 
olic Church; both of which they have usurped, having, indeed, neither of 
them ! As touching their sacrament of the altar, I say now, as I said be- 
fore, that it is not the sacrament of Christ; neither in the same is there any 
manner of Christ's presence. And when they take on the name of the 
Catholic Church, they are nothing so, but call you from the true religion 
to vain superstition.' 

" Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion, that deviations from the primitive 
mode in what is merely ritual may be admitted on the ground of conven- 
ience, and that the Roman Catholics are as well warranted in withholding 
the cup from the people as the Established Church is in substituting 
sprinkling for the ancient mode of baptism. 

" In the form of communion composed by Drs. Ellert and Neander, for 
the new evangelical church in Prussia, under the authority of the king, 
no terms of actual ' consecration ' were used, the historical fact only being 
related that Christ said, ' This is my body,' etc. ; ' This is my blood,' etc. 
Such was the state expedient adopted to reconcile the opinions of the 
Lutheran and Calvinistic churches. Many, however, contended that this 
was no real sacrament at all, only a narrative of the transaction ; and that 
in this way, even Jews and Mohammedans might be admitted to communi- 

* He was consigned to the stake at Uxbridge, in the reign of Queen Mary, 
in the year of death, 1555. 



340 EITUALISM DETHRONED. 

cate. Many conscientious Prussians suffered severely on account of their 
religious convictions, and especially on this subject of the eucharist. 

" And who does not see that if a literal interpretation be given to the 
language and example of the ' Lord's Supper/ a supper should now be 
strictly observed, and not the use of a sop-cup, or wafer (or crumb of 
bread) in the middle of the day. But in the eucharist, as in water-bap- 
tism, a literal consistency, or imitation, has oft been departed from. The 
Anglican Church forbids her ministers to administer the communion to 
any but to such as kneel, under pain of suspension. On the continent 
the bread and wine are usually received by Protestants while standing, and 
that weekly or monthly. 

"At a general meeting of Scotch Episcopal ministers held at Perth in 
1617, one of the articles adopted enjoined the practice of ' kneeling at the 
communion,' which proved more obnoxious to the people than all the 
others, being so identified in their minds with the idolatry of Eome that 
they shrank from it with horror, and great excitement and opposition 
followed. 

It is not necessary to continue this record of sacramentarian ritualism 
on the one hand, and of the protest against it on the other ; the true spiritual 
Israel has waged this conflict with the " Israel after the flesh," in all the 
Christian ages. The high sacramentarians, as the Greek, Papal, and 
Anglican Churches, have proclaimed the right of the embodied Church to 
institute and decree ordinances and customs, and enforce them ; and certain 
it is that no sacrament has been observed for a long period among them 
without a tedious addenda of senseless mummeries, and superstitious ad- 
juncts ; and turning the attention of religious inquirers wholly to the forms 
rather than to the substance of religion in its regenerating and life-exalting 
power of love to God and man. 

Love and fellowship have been everywhere sacrificed to the sacrament 
and the form, however much every age and nation has differed as to what 
the form should be. Germany was at one time about depopulated by a 
bloody war for churches and sacraments (see tract, " Results of One War," 
published by the American Peace Society).* And every nation where 

* In England, in 1555, and the three following years (in Mary's reign), not 
less than two hundred and eighty persons were publicly burnt or otherwise 
executed, chiefly for their difference of sentiment on the mysterious question 
of the bread and wine; and many more died in prison. This was using the 
power of state to enforce a sacrament in the Church ! And of fifty million 
persons, said to have perished directly or indirectly by the persecutions of the 
Papal Church, visited upon Protestants, how many of these were not on 
account of nonconformity in sacraments ? 

See this subject with the connected persecutions lucidly set forth in John 
Allen's " State Churches," from which we have freely copied, and to which we 
have often referred in this volume. 



"the lord's dinner;" what it teaches. 341 

Christ has been named has stained its soil by the bloodshed and martyr- 
dom of its truest saints for this cause supremely. Did Jesus Christ come 
to send " a sword," among his followers for such causes ? Ah, when shall 
the churches be truly Protestantized and reformed from the whole ritual 
idolatry of Judaism, Heathenism, and the Papacy? Who will arise to 
strike down with a mighty arm this illusive idolatry of ceremonies and 
sacraments ? 

Who, in Christ's name, will enter the lists to lift the real New Tes- 
tament baptism from its degradation and subsidized vassalage to a 
mere formal worship ? to sect and schism ? and to profitless externals ? 
while the true Anointing, the Spirit of life from God, is eschewed ? Who 
will call all churches from their worthless clamor about the Lord's table, 
to that true " supping" and " dining" with Christ, to which Christ invites 
us? 

As the Lord's Supper is now ceremonially (as a general custom) cele- 
brated at the " dining " hour, we submit (in concluding this chapter) the 
following most practical and most sensible thoughts on the " Lord's Din- 
ner," and the improvement here suggested, in lieu of the ceremonial supper, 
and its awakened strifes, as more honorable to Christ, and more beneficent 
to man. Moreover, the " Lord's Dinner," as thus presented, will surely be 
found to be an institution of the " first resurrection," the " regeneration," 
or the New Dispensation. 

The Lord's Dinner. 

[Extract from a sermon preached to a Presbyterian congregation in Chicago, on occa- 
sion of a National Thanksgiving. By Rev. Robert Patterson, Pastor of the church.} 

(Inserted by permission of the author.) 

Text — " Come, and dine : " and context — John xxi. 12, etc. 

[A clear and concise view (by contrast) of the kind of sacrament, sacri- 
fice, ritual, and ordinance the Lord Jesus Christ would have us observe.] 

" Hundreds of volumes have been written, and thousands of sermons 
have been preached on the Lord's Supper, the symbol of the cleansing and 
feeding of our souls ; but Avho has ever read a volume or heard a sermon on 
the Lord's Dinner ? So greatly have we neglected this other half of true 
religion, charity for the bodily wants of our brethren of mankind, that I 
presume my hearers experience a feeling of surprise that I should read 
such a text, and that some may suppose I am about to present some inno- 
vation on Christian doctrine, or at least to startle you by some novelty. 
To disabuse your minds of such a mistake, as well as to establish your faith 
on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, it is needful — 

" I. To show you the historical place of the Lord's Dinner, as a Christly 
exemplification of that union of faith and charity, which ever constituted 
true religion. 



342 EITUALISM DETHEONED. 

" II. Glance at the extent of our backsliding, and the evils resulting 
from it. 

" III. Exhort to a return to Christ's Christianity. 

" I. Christ's exemplary care for the bodies, as well as the souls of sin- 
ners, was not now for the first time manifested to the world. His humane 
charity was displayed at the very beginning of the Church, by his clothing 
our first parents in coats of skins, probably those of the first sacrifice. The 
covenant of salvation, with its rainbow sign, is no sooner renewed with 
Noah, than Christ, taking notice of man's heavier toils in the malarious 
atmosphere of an inundated world, enlarges his larder with a more gener- 
ous diet, and allows him the use of animal food — showing thus that religion 
cares first for the body, and next for the soul. You next find the Lord 
eating of Abraham's and Sarah's cakes and calf under the tree, and there- 
after directing a perishing fugitive African woman and her child to a foun- 
tain of water in the wilderness. All these divine examples give us Christ's 
idea of religion, as a salvation of the body no less than the soul. 

" Then you find our Lord taking notice of the straw which the Egyptians 
withheld from their slaves, counting the blows they inflicted on them, listen- 
ing to the cries of the bondmen, and coming down to deliver them from 
slavery ; all before he has made any revelation of law, or required of them 
any return of sacrifice. Moreover, you will not fail to note the daily gos- 
pel of manna to feed their crying children, and the quails with which he 
gratified their appetites, and the fountain of the smitten rock with which 
he quenched their thirst, and the promised land, flowing with milk and 
honey, which he bestowed upon them — not from any expectation that they 
would be won. to gratitude by his goodness, for he knew they would 
persist in unbelief and perish in their sins ; but simply because it is a 
deligh£ to him to do good, even to the unthankful and to the evil. 

" You will not forget, also, when he instituted ordinances of worship, to 
which he commanded his people to devote not less than one-tenth of the 
produce of their farms or increase, how little he says about psalms or 
sermons, and how emphatically he reiterates his commands that the poor 
and the stranger, and the fatherless and the widow, shall be invited to eat 
of the sacrifices, and to rejoice before the Lord. The worship of the God 
of Israel at the great national festivals was more inseparably associated 
with a public dinner to the poor, than our church services are with prayer 
and praise. 

" This must be remembered when we read all these prophecies of the 
reign of Messiah, which predict his love for the poor and needy, the plenty 
which shall spring from the earth in his days, and the feast which he shall 
spread for all people. 

" When he comes into the world he takes his place among the poor, is 
cradled in a manger, and reared in a carpenter's workshop. We see him 
looking for a breakfast in the hedge-row, and comparing his lot with the 
foxes and the birds of the air — doubtless voluntarily enduring these priva- 



"the lord's dinner;" what it teaches. 343 

tions that lie might the better sympathize with the hungry and the house- 
less poor. 

" His first miracle, at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, plainly disclosed 
that his religion was to be no merely intellectual and spiritual doctrine, 
but a restoration of all the blessings of Eden, a deliverance from the per- 
plexities of poverty, and an enjoyment of social family plenty and happi- 
ness in the living earthly home, through the blessing of the Son of man ; 
and his first sermon assured us that our Heavenly Father, who provides 
for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, cares for the food and 
clothing of his children. The whole course of his ministry followed this 
beginning. You ever find him preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and 
healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people. 
When the hungry multitudes fainted around him, he had compassion on 
them, and twice miraculously fed them with barley loaves and fishes — 
influenced by no hope of buying their suffrages, for he foresaw and foretold 
their apostasy, but simply by his natural inborn love of relieving human 
suffering. 

" His preaching corresponds to his practice, and he urges his people to 
follow his disinterested example in this matter : 

" ' When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends nor thy 
brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid 
thee again, and a recompense be made thee; but when thou makest a feast, 
call the poor and the maimed, the lame and the blind, and thou shalt be 
blessed, for they cannot recompense thee, and thou shalt be recompensed at 
the resurrection of the just.' No command for any one to endow a college 
or build a synagogue ever fell from his lips, nor does he glory in the mighty 
works performed in his name by his disciples ; but you hear him command- 
ing a rich youns? man to sell his estates, and houses, and horses, and furni- 
ture, and give the proceeds to the poor, and rejoicing that salvation had 
come to the house of the convicted publican who made restitution of hi3 
extortions, and gave half of the remainder of his estate away in charity. 

" In his last public address to his disciples before his crucifixion, charity 
occupies the most eminent place, and is enforced by the most solemn 
considerations. He describes the irrevocable issues of the great day of 
retribution, not as decided by an accurate knowledge or an intelligent 
orthodoxy, or even a fervent piety, but by their infallible fruit— a warm- 
hearted, open-handed charity for Christ's sake. 'Then shall the King 
say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world : 
for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave 
me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, and ye clothed 
me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an 
hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? when saw we 
thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? or when 



344 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee ? And the King shall 
answer and say unto them. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have 
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me/ Matt. xxv. 34-40. 

" We are now, I hope, in some degree prepared to receive the meaning 
of the solemn scene recorded in the text. As immediately before his pas- 
sion our Lord concentrated all the great truths of his atonement in the 
significant symbols of the Lord's Supper,* so now, about to send them forth 
to the great work of converting the world by his gospel of love, he em- 
bodies and dramatically exhibits to his apostles, in the Lord's Dinner, a 
vivid picture of the other great department of religion, a true Christ-like 
charity, as their guide in all their intercourse with their brethren of 
mankind. 

" It was at Jerusalem, the holy city, that the Son of God revealed the 
sublime system of theology to his Church ; but the Son of man sought the 
familiar shores of the Sea of Galilee, where he had wrought so many works 
of mercy, when he would teach his brethren the lessons of a kindly hu- 
manity. 

" The Son of Mary, during the period of his lowly life of humiliation, 
might, despite the halo of his miracles, be expected to feel for the wants 
which he shared with his followers; but now, that he is declared to be the 
Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead, and exalted 
above the stings of want and death, and associating with the hierarchy of 
heaven, does he, can he, still retain the same fellow-feelings for our infirm- 
ities, the same care for our bodily necessities ? Undoubtedly ! This is 
Jesus Christ, ' the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.' ' This is now the 
third time he showed himself after he was risen from the dead,' and on 
each occasion had eaten with them, or asked them to handle him, and see 
that he was still the same. The friends to whom he addressed himself are 
the same humble fishermen whom he had called to make them fishers of 
men, who had been his companions in the glory of the holy mount, had wit- 
nessed his agony in the garden, and whom he was about to commission to 
establish his kingdom in all the world. It is the last interview between 
the Lord and the Church, of which, w T e have any full account, and it occupies 
the solemn position of being the very last recorded by the pen of inspira- 
tion — the conclusion of the gospel history; the Holy Ghost thus intimating 
the solemn significance of the event. Ponder it carefully. 

" See the solicitude of the Lord for the success of the common industry 
of his people, in the kindly familiar inquiry, ' Children, have ye any 
meat?' He sympathizes with the toiling tradesman. Then behold his 
willingness to help them, by his superhuman wisdom, to a success they 

* Query: Was not the supper, now so greatly perverted to an ecclesiastical 
or sectarian use, by apostles and primitive saints used only to inculcate les- 
sons of charity to the poor, the sick, and the needy also ? So it was. 



" THE LORD'S DINNER ; " WHAT IT TEACHES. 345 

could never acquire by their own toil. For the truth of the other lesson 
drawn from this acted parable of the success of the gospel fishers of men, 
we must just take this literal truth for granted, that the Lord is [that is, 
cares] for the body ; and you behold the recognition of his character, while 
his person was yet veiled by the mists of the morning, by this well-known 
care of their bodily welfare. John at once says, ' It is the Lord.' 

" But the scene that follows the landing confounds all comment. We 
see the fire, the fish laid thereon, and the bread ; and we ask ourselves, in 
utter amazement, ' Have those pierced and glorified hands been engaged 
in these menial offices for his hungry brethren ? ' and we remember the 
supper, and the basin, and the towel, and the washing of feet, and feel that 
it is certainly the same Jesus ; but alas ! our astonishment proves that we 
are of a different spirit. And as we think of our so-called spirituality, 
which shrinks from personal labors for the poor, and of our religion, all 
dogmas and prayers and praises, we blush and feel how far removed from 
Christ's Christianity is our correct, cold, supercilious orthodoxy : and we 
would fain be excused from eating of this dinner cooked by Jesus' hands. 
But he will take no excuse ; he calls us to ' Come and dine,' and none durst 
ask him ' Who art thou ? ' knowing it was the Lord ! 

" The Church was not slow to learn the lesson thus taught by the exam- 
ple of the Lord. Recognizing him as the great Redeemer of mankind 
from all the sorrows and miseries of sin, and himself as the messenger of 
Christ's salvation to the bodies and souls of men, no sooner was the Holy 
Ghost poured out than Christians rose in a might of charity, which, had it 
continued, would soon have conquered the world. Rich men sold their 
estates for the relief of the poor ; no man said that any thing he possessed 
was his own, and it seemed as if the human race would soon be once again 
one happy family. The very first ecclesiastical business of the new Chris- 
tian society was the appointment of deacons, whose sole and special busi- 
ness it was to see that none of the poor were neglected in the distribution 
of this charity. Paul, the most doctrinal of the apostles, is as emphatic 
in enforcing charity as the chief of Christian virtues, as John, who leaned 
on Jesus' breast. With his friend Titus, he risked his life in dangerous 
journeys, to collect from Christians in distant lands, and of strange 
tongues, relief for the victims of famine, the poor and suffering at Jerusa- 
lem. James, the Lord's brother, writes an epistle expressly to rebuke a 
tendency to a niggardly orthodoxy, and to pillory faith without works. 

" The early churches followed in Christ's footsteps ; and when the hea- 
then, terror-stricken by the plague, fled from their dearest friends, leaving 
the sick unattended and the dead unburied, the Christians, singing their 
hymns of faith and hope, nursed the sick, buried the dead, and fed the 
orphans thrown by thousands on their care. Thus the gospel was demon- 
strated a gospel of love. 

" For centuries the Christian Church gave great prominence to charity, 
as the chief part of religion. She found more than half the population of 



346 RITUALISM DETHEOXED. 

the Eoman empire slaves, and emancipated them ; forbade the fierce soldier 
to strike the fallen warrior who asked for his life in the name of Jesus ; 
purchased captives with the price of the sacred vessels, and set them free, as 
the noblest offerings to the God of Liberty ; built monasteries and churches, 
where the oppressed and helpless fugitive might flee for sanctuary ; and 
waved the awful [wand] of the Father of the fatherless in the face of the 
pursuing robber, ravisher and murderer ; endowed these establishments 
with lands, and taught her people to send them gifts, which she expended 
in feeding the multitudes of famishing men, women and children, whom 
the invasions of the Goths, Vandals, Germans and Northmen had driven 
from their homes to perish ; and, finally, laying hold on these very savages, 
converted and civilized them into the French, German, British, and 
American churches and nations. [But Popery having at length run to the 
extreme of making charity and alms, legacies and bequests, without repent- 
ance, faith, and a personal righteousness, the substance of all religion, 
need we wonder that there was at length a great reaction ?] 

" Need we marvel that the men of an after generation, who having en- 
joyed the benefit of the battles of the first reformers, took time to hold 
synods, and councils, and assemblies, and to frame articles, and most 
formal and minute catechisms and confessions of faith, some of which em- 
brace several thousand propositions, and present a complete body of 
theology, should have so utterly forgotten that theology is only one-half of 
religion, and, never have treated of the subject of humanity, which occupies 
so large a portion of the Scriptures. 

" In a most minute confession of faith, ranging over all subjects, from 
the eternal decrees to the last judgment, and displayed in more than thirty 
chapters, there is only one devoted to ' Good "Works,' and six -sevenths of 
that chapter are controversial and polemical. In a catechism designed for 
the instruction of adults in the nature and practice of the true Christian 
Protestant Eeformed Eeligion, containing over two thousand propositions, 
there are only two references to the duty by whose performance men will 
be judged for eternity. Nor is this awful omission peculiar to the creeds 
and catechisms of that period. In a collection of the works of the Puritan 
divines, consisting of fifty-five octavo volumes, and treating of every sub- 
ject of controversial theology, cases of conscience, and many of the duties 
of common life, there is not a single chapter or discourse on charity, and 
not more than half a dozen casual references to the duty of relieving the 
poor* 

* In his inaugural at the University of St. Andrew's [England], Mr. Froude, 
the historian and lecturer on Papal and Protestant annals, touches the subject 
of ministerial education. He seems to consider it as too fearfully abstract and 
ritualistic to meet the wants of these corrupt times. Hear him : — "What I 
deplore in our present higher education," says this eminent man, "is the de- 
votion of so much effort and so many precious years to subjects which have no 



"the lord's dinner;" what it teaches. 347 

"We need not wonder that a theology thus divorced from charity was 
speedily rejected by the people, whose instincts have always denied the 
sovereignty of the intellect, but bowed down willingly to the supremacy 
of love. What cared they to be mocked with unintelligible cKsjmtes about 
election and free will, while the law of the land made it a penal offence 
for a starving pauper to solicit alms, and forbade the workingman to leave 
the parish in which he was born, on pain of forfeiting his right to the alms- 
house, and of risk of imprisonment as a vagrant? Accordingly, the 
English people . . . rose in utter disgust and loathing, and east off this 
heartless orthodoxy, which had shown itself so utterly ignorant or careless 
of the wants of human nature. Wise and learned in all that pertains to 
God, it is to this day dumb on the claims of manhood. Need we wonder 
that when it had been accepted as the standard of religion, as in Germany, 
England, and New England, and to some extent in Scotland, the reaction 
to Socinianism was speedily accomplished. 

" In Scotland this result was partially prevented by the practical sagacity 
of the Scottish Parliament, which, influenced partly by a desire to save 
their own pockets from a poor-rate like that of England, placed the relief 
of the poor as a charge upon the church, to be defrayed out of the Sabbath 
collections, and distributed by the elders ; which provision, pitiably insuf- 



practical bearing upon life. Classics and philosophy are supposed at Oxford 
to be specially adapted for creating ministers of religion. The training of 
clergymen is, if anything, the special object of Oxford teaching. All arrange- 
ments are made with a view to it. The heads of colleges, the resident fellows, 
tutors, and professors, are generally ecclesiastics themselves. The effect ought 
to have been considerable. 

" We have had thirty years of unexampled clerical activity among us ; 
churches have been doubled : theological books, magazines, reviews, news- 
papers, have been poured out by hundreds of thousands, while by the side of 
it there has sprung up an equally astonishing development of moral dishonesty. 
From the great houses in the city of London to the village grocer, the com- 
mercial life of England has been saturated with fraud. So deep has it gone 
that a strictly honest tradesman can hardly hold bis ground against compe- 
tition. You can no longer trust that any article that you buy is the thing 
which it pretends to be. We have false weights, false measures, cheating, and 
shoddy everywhere. Yet the clergy have seen all this grow up in absolute 
indifference; and the groat question which at this moment is iigitating the 
Church of England is the color of the ecclesiastical petticoats. Many a hun- 
dred sermons have I heard in England, many a dissertation on the mysteries 
of the faith, on the divine mission of the clergy, on apostolical succession, on 
bishops, and justification, and the theory of good works, and verbal inspira- 
tion, and the efficacy of the sacraments ; but never during these thirty wonder- 
ful years, never one that I can recollect on common honesty or those primitive 
commandments — Thou shalt not lie, and thou shalt not steal. 



348 Ritualism dethroned. 

ficiesit as it was, hy God's blessing prevented the total divorce of faith and 
charity there. 

" But in England, until the march of Methodism, the name of Presby- 
terian was synonymous with Socinian ; and in New England, Universalists 
to-day -are preaching a,nd teaching in churches and schools founded and 
(endowed by 'Scoteli Presbyterians and English Puritans. In both countries 
the great majority of the people have turned their backs on the church ; 
and is London, Kite capital of Christendom, not one-tenth of the people 
are -communicants. Neither these facts, however, nor all the increased 
activity of the present century, have yet aAvakened the Protestant churches 
to any earnest consideration of the subject. In the bookstores of Phila- 
delphia, Boston, New York, Washington, and Chicago, / have not been, 
able to jjind a syslertkatic treatise in the English language on Charity, such 
•as Freiwh^ Malian, ■and German laymen and noblemen have written. In a 
collection of some Smndreds of pamphlets, sermons, and addresses, deliv- 
ered during the past ten years, now before me, there is only one which 
treats of the duty <of beneficence. [Yet they haA'e a plenty of treatises on 
the sacr&iaients. — Author.] 

" The Tract Society has issued some excellent tracts on the subject, and 
a layman has called attention to it, as furnishing 'New Themes for the 
Protestant Clergy ; 7 but beyond this, the orthodox clergy seem to have 
•concluded that the great business of their lives was to preach theology, 
and if their people chose to practise beneficence, it was over and above the 
requirements of the church covenant. During thirty years' regular 
attendance on ch&reh, I have never heard a sermon on the subject of 
Charity. 

" And the people, too, settle down into the belief that a religious experi- 
ence consists in beliefs, and notions, and feelings, and prayers [and sacra- 
ments] merely, and would feel greatly shocked to hear any one narrate 
such an experience as our Lord enjoined in these passages we have read ; 
yet it is evident that both our Lord and his apostles regarded this dinner, 
cooked with his own hands for hungry men, as not less sacred than the 
preceding sacramental supper; and that when charity and worship inter- 
fere, worship, according to him, must always give tvay to charity, as he says, 
*I will have mercy, and not sacrifice,' though ministers familiar with 
the Bible will think and speak of religion as something different from 
charity. [Do they not urge their sacraments and put them in the place of 
love and mercy? — Author.] 

"Nevertheless, the divorce of religion and charity is not now and never 
was complete. The Bible, with its great catholic benevolence, and its 
graphic and natural style, its biographies, and similes, and parables, was 
always more read than the theologians. The catechism was forgotten, but 
the good Samaritan was remembered. Wherever there was true love to 
Christ, there was always love to the poor for his sake, who had not where 
to lay his head. So it came to pass that poor, stunted, prickly Cavinism, 



"the lord's dinner;" what it teaches. 349 

all neglected and untilled though it was, when the angry Masts ©f biting 
controversy lulled, and the sun of revival shone, began to scent the air 
with fragrant benevolences, and ripened healthful golden fruits of works 
good and profitable unto men, while the rootless limbs cut <$>if from, Chris- 
tianity by infidel reformers, and planted with wondrous prediction, of the- 
miracles they were about to accomplish, die out before thehr planters, and 
wither and are cast into the fire. Socialism is selfishn ess — Christianity is 
charity." 

Benevolent Institutions based wholly om Chris- 
tianity. 

"All our greatest and most beneficial institutions are tihe real audi a.vowed 
fruits of Christian faith ; not by any means so great or so numerous as 
they should be, but yet the world would be in an ill case wikout thenu 
Have you ever seen orphan houses, blind asylums, charity schools, Dtescass 
societies, city missions, Bible women, medical missions, prison reforms,. 
Sabbath schools, West India emancipation, acting on infidel principles ? 
Does any man dream that our war having been fought, four millions of 
negroes would have been set free, if the people could have believed/, the 
dogma, that fourteen different races of men originally spramg* out of the 
earth, divided into superior and inferior races, united by 210 ties^of eomsmoiL 
parentage and common redemption, and incapable of equal rights- and 
equal happiness in our common Father's house? Or dial ev«ar infidel or 
heathen nation show such an outburst of genuine charity as when thou- 
sands of clergymen and laymen, from love to Christ and country,, left their 
pulpits and offices for the camp, to bind up the wounds of fba bleeding,, 
and give the cup of cordial to the sick, to sing hymns of hope Igcthe- bed- 
side of the languishing, to find their famishing enemies, and feedJanoT nurse- 
them, transmit the last messages to friends from the dying, and point the 
departing spirit to Him who felt the sharpness of death Ustr us, and' 
thereby opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers? This, aad much 
more than this, was done during the course of the war, avowedlyft'om love- 
to Christ, without pay or fame, by Christians of all evangelical ahurches ;■ 
and all felt that it was but a return to the Christianity of th*> gospels.. 
And so far from this outburst of charity leading to any disparagement of 
devotion, it is now manifest that the churehes and Christians who most: 
actively engaged in these labors of love have been revived by xli>.e largest 
outpouring of the spirit of prayer, and blessed with the greatest success: 
in the conversion of souls. 

" The past history of the Protestant churches, then, shows us; the sui- 
cidal results of dissecting religion into its component parts, and of offering 
to the world a skeleton of orthodoxy, instead of a living gospel. The pres- 
ent experiments of the Church in the revival of charity, as a revival of 
religion, encourage us to persevere in the endeavor to retrace cur back- 



350 RITUALISM DETHRONED. 

slidings, and to imitate the example of our blessed Lord in endeavoring to 
save both the bodies and the souls of men. God and man alike disown 
orthodoxy divorced from charity, add bless the religion of faith and love. 
Infidels know this, and labor by every art to procure the power over men's 
minds which the administration of charity to their bodies imparts. But 
Christian faith is needful to the permanence and success of their charities ; 
and, as they have it not themselves, they frequently seek a partnership 
with Christians. The proposal is sometimes made as a favor, and a relief 
to the aged Church. Having failed to relieve the world's miseries, she is 
invited in future to confine her labors to her prayers and her tracts, her 
sernaoj&s and her psalms, and hand over the work of charity to them, or 
unite with them in bestowing bodily relief on infidel principles. We 
sreply, that the proposition is officious. Why should they propose to do 
our business ? How do they come to possess a monopoly of humanity ? 
We are men as well as they. We reply, in the second place, that the past 
«xj:>erience of infidel philanthropists is not encouraging to those who would 
.seek t© raise man's condition by destroying his faith in God's revelation, 
mi Christ's salvation, and in a holy immortality. We reply again, that 
they grossly mistake the revival of religion, and the power of God's provi- 
dential education of his Church, if they suppose we will ever again tolerate 
the divorce of works of charity from the faith which produces them, or 
own a religion of dead faith. We thank them, however, for the insult, 
which has roused us to an examination of our principles, and we hope will 
impel us to such a performance of our duty as will preclude its repetition." 

True Religion combines Piety and Charity. 

'" God's religion consists of a living soul of piety and a working bod 
of charity, fully described in the two great commands, 'Thou shalt lov 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love thy neighbor •<; 
thyself.' Mere sentimental piety, unclothed in the bodily forms of prac- 
tical benevolence, has no more influence in this world of ours than thosi 
disembodied spirits which, it is said, some where tinkle on tables, an' 
move the tongues of imaginative females, and attempt other equally useful 
performances; and we know from the words of our Lord that it is treated 
with equal contempt in the other world of stern realities. But, on the 
other hand, benevolence toward man can have no origin but in faith 
toward God, as the common Father of all mankind ; nor has philanthropy 
ever been practised persistently by any save believers in the brotherhood 
of men. All the liberties, amenities and charities of our modern civiliza- 
tion are merely so many expressions of Christianity, without which they 
would no more have existed here and now than they did in Britain two 
thousand years ago, or than they do in Turkey or China to-day. 

" Had Christianity been fully and practically taught in Christian lands 
for the last eighteen centuries, as it was by its Author, these blessed fruits 



"the lords dinner;" what it teaches. 351 

of this tree of life had been much more numerous. There is scarcely a 
misery of life ■which might not have been relieved, not an ignorant country 
■which might not have been instructed, and not a savage nation which 
might not have been civilized, had the time and talent which Christian 
churches have wasted in theological disputes, and the many lives 
which Christian nations have expended in war, been employed 
i-i the blessed work of doing good to the bodies and souls of men. These 
two must never be separated in our philanthropic efforts ; for the plain 
reason, that we never meet them separated in actual life. God made man 
with body and soul, capable of eternal happiness or misery, and both alike 
redeemed by the sufferings of the body and soul of the Son of God. If you 
can find a man without a body, you may rationally propose to him a mere 
theology of the intellect ; and if you can find men without souls, they are 
suitable subjects for the charity of the manger and the stable — a Christless 
benevolence. But for the mortal men of this world of ours — so cold and 
busy, and sickly and hungry — a gospel of flour and fire-wood, and gospel 
consolations, of shoes and Sabbath-schools, of hoods and hymn books, of 
conversion from sin, and steady wor/c and fair wages, is the only practical 
religion. 

" Such a religion the Young Men's Christian Association of this city 
carries to the homes of the poor. Their visitors feed the hungry children 
of the widow, fill her stove with a rousing fire, tell of Jesus, for whose sake 
it is done, and invite the children to Sabbath-school and the parents to$ 
church and prayer-meeting. They bring the temperance pledge to the 
drunkard, and kneel in prayer with him for God's grace to strengthen 
him against the love of liquor. They send the gentle sympathizing Chris- 
tian woman to the side of the sick sufferer with a bowl of soup and words 
of sympathy, and a tract or religious newspaper full of soul-comfort; for 
man doth not live by bread alone, and the sorrows of a soul convinced of 
sin are not to be lulled by incredible universalisms about the equal love 
of God for holiness and wickedness. But why occupy time in describing 
the work which you yourselves are performing ; for this work is not done 
by paid agents, but by the volunteer labor of the members of the churches. 
It is, in fact, a return to Christ's Christianity, and will ultimately, I hope, 
engage every member of the Church ; for nothing short of personal labor 
corresponds to the example of our blessed Saviour. In the meantime, let 
those who do not now engage personally in it furnish liberally the means 
to those who do, and bless God that they may thus express their gratitude 
to the God of our mercies by a generous thank-offering for the relief of 
Christ's poor, and God will own it, perhaps, by inspiring you to become 
the almoners of your own bounty. He will accept and bless it, and will 
one day say, 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye did it unto me.' " 



ADDENDA. 



CORRELATED MISCELLANY. 

CHRISTIANS NON-ACCOUNTABLE TO MAN— WHAT THE 

EEFOEMATION TAUGHT. 

[From an address of Dr. Schaff before the Festival of the Reformation, held at Ply- 
mouth Church, Brooklyn, October 31, 1867.] 

" I have not time to read these ninety -five theses of Luther to-night ; 
if I did, you would be surprised to observe how recently is the full-grown 
development of Protestantism. In some of these theses Luther professes 
great reverence for the Pope of Rome and submission to his authority. 
In those theses is found a vital element of truth, which proves a living 
germ of the whole system of Protestant Christianity. It is especially the 
doctrine of repentance, concerning which Luther teaches that it does not 
consist simply in outward mortification and penances, but in a change of 
heart, and concerning Jesus Christ and his cross as the true and unfailing 
fountain for the remission of sins, to which, if the sinner applies, peace 
will come to his conscience. 

" The Reformation was not a sudden abrupt event ; nor was it a part 
of any declaration on the part of Luther. He was innocently made a 
reformer. The times made him as he made the times ; or Providence, 
rather, shaped both to each other. And when he affixed those ninety- 
five theses to the doors of the castle church of Wurtemberg he had not 
the most distant idea of the incalculable consequences which should grow 
out of them. I say the Reformation had been prepared long before, not 
only by the corruptions of the Papacy, but also by the great revival of 
letters through Erasmus and others, by the labors of the Mystics who 
were preaching a moral inward religion — a religion consisting in direct 
union and communion of the soul with God. It was prepared by the 
activity of Wickliff in England, of Huss in Germany, of Savonarola in 
Italy, and many like-minded divines and preachers throughout Europe 
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was prepared by many 
of the devout in the Catholic Church, in the head and in the members. 
It was prepared by the invention of the art of printing, which preceded 
it about seventy years, and which alone spread the light of the Reforma- 
tion with the speed of lightning all over Europe ; so that the Reformation 
of the sixteenth century is only the ripe fruit, the seed of which had been 



11 ADDENDA. 

cast and scattered for centuries before in the various parts of Christendom. 
Hence those ninety-five theses kindled the Eeformaiion all over the 
Church ; they were the signal of the great intellectual and spiritual battle 
which now broke out all over the Catholic world, it had the same con- 
nection with Protestantism that Fort Sumter had to the civil war. It 
was not the cause hut the occasion of the Reformation. The material 
which was to be kindled into a conflagration was at hand long before. 
All the causes were prepared through the preceding ages in ail the de- 
partments of the Christian Church, and Jience the extraordinary effect. 

" What has come out of those ninety-five theses at the beginning of the 
Eeformation? Simultaneous with that movement of Luther was this 
Zwinglian Reformation in Switzerland, and Calvinism in Geneva. That 
was followed by the Reformed Churches of England and Scotland. Then 
came Puritanism, which was the mover and shape*' of the destinies of the 
!New World, not only in religion but in politics. We may say of the 
Declaration of Independence of 1776, cur whole political e'cono'my, our 
self-governing institutions, our civil and religious liberties — they are ail 
the legitimate results of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The 
great proclaimers were Luther, and Zwingle, and Calvin, and Knox, and 
Latimer, and Cranmer. It marked the great epoch in civil as well as in 
religious affairs. And this leads me to say a few words about the proper 
principle or moving force of Protestantism as represented by the great 
reformers of the sixteenth century. 

" Protestantism is not simply a negative protest against tyranny and 
Popery (infidelity likewise protests) ; but it is a protest on a positive 
foundation, on the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The nature 
of Protestantism, the essence of Protestantism, the principle of Protestant- 
ism, is freedom ; but freedom only from the restraints of man, from 
a tyranny of conscience, from all that false teachers had imposed 
upon man without any divine warrant; it is freedom on the basis of 
obedience to God and to his holy word. It is that freedom which con- 
sists in the cheerful and ready obedience to the divine word and to the 
divine will. The great Protestant principle is this, the doctrine of evan- 
gelical freedom. It brings man into a direct and immediate relation to 
Christ. The relation of the Roman Catholic to Christ is mediate, through 
the Church and through an innumerable army of saints. The Roman 
Catholic, pious as he may be. hardly ever prays directly to Christ, but 
always through the mediation of the Virgin Mary ; while the Protestant 
Christian always enjoys the privilege of addressing himself directly to 
Christ; he enjoys a direct and individual union and communion with 
hiru. This is the soul and heart, the sum and substance of true evangeli- 
cal Protestantism; and this is what I mean by evangelical freedom. It 
is freedom in Christ as required in the Xevr Testament, without the in- 
tervention of human traditions. It is freedom to search the Scriptures 
to see whether they really teach what has been given us by our pastors 
and parents — the exercise of private judgment concerning those divine 
truths necessary for salvation. It is the saving newer of freedom in 
Christ, all-sufficient as a rule of faith. Hence theologians teach of a 
formal and material principle of Protestantism : the formal teaches the 
supremacy and all-sufficiency of the Holy Scripture? ; that they are a 
sufficient rule in all matters of faith and practice ; and the material prin- 
ciple consists in the doctrine cf justification by the grace of Christ as ap- 



ADDENDA. Ill 

pretended by faith. But both these principles resolve themselves into 
the one principle of evangelical freedom in Christ. 

" Protestantism aims at a universal priesthood and the universal kin- 
ship of the human family. This great mission is to be accomplished 
here on the soil of the new world. America was barely discovered when 
Luther commenced his reformation, and the name of America never oc- 
curs in his writings. It is here and here alone that the idea of a univer- 
sal priesthood of believers will be ultimately carried out." 

Henry Dickinson, of the Society of Friends, also added : 

" Martin Luther believed that he was a good son of the Church. He 
knew not the mighty power that was working within him, when he sought 
a spiritual benefit (as instructed by the Pope) by creeping on his knees 
at Rome. How much that man suffered in the earnestness of his pur- 
pose, to experience the blessedness of peace with God, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost, none of us know. It is our privilege to reap the benefits 
that have been purchased for us by the sacrifices of Martin Luther and 
others. 'The just shall live by faith,' was wrought out in his spirit. 
How much that man passed through in his narrow cell at Wurtemberg 
we can never know; but we may go over the ground in thought and re- 
flection. We reflect upon that journey to Worms — how nothing seemed 
to make him fear ; that crowded assembly of magnates and representatives 
of the Pope were as nothing to him. He saw him that was invisible, 
with his mind's eye, by faith. Luther moved on with prayer ; the Saviour 
led him as the divine truth was opened to him ; first beginning as the 
devout son of the Church to sweep away abuses, he went on until, at last, 
he came to believe the Pope the very incarnation of all evil." 

At the same meeting Rev. S. H. Tyng, Jr., spoke as follows : 

ANOTHER REFORMATION NEEDED. 

" If there be any fact to which the American people need to awake, it 
is to the necessity of another reformation, a reformation in every succes- 
sor of the old Reformation. For, whilst in the Church which I strive 
loyally to serve, there may be excrescenses, developments more pro- 
nounced from the inevitable tendencies of liturgic worship, I hold, that 
in every existing Church of Christ the spirit of Rome is manifesting it- 
self. The effort to invest the Lord's Supper with an excessive dignity 
can nowhere be found in the word of God ; it is rendered a sacrament of 
distance, rather than a sacrament of nearness. This is Romanism in the 
bud. And these peculiarities which belong to the church of which I am 
a member, I claim to belong to every existing Church of Christ. The 
great need is placed in connection with the great event, and we rally 
around Luther when we stand true to the principles which he affirmed. 
Rome is not eternal. Rome is not an organization simply ; it is not a 
ceremony. Rome is in doctrine, and where Romish doctrine is admitted, 
or where the tendencies of the Romish doctrine are submitted to, there 
is the need of the united effort to oppose the innovation. 

" What is the spirit of the Reformation ? Free thought, limited only 
by the word of God, and abundant confidence and trust in the self-vindi- 
cating power of the word of God. I believe that everything which any 
man can get out of this Bible he has a right to teach, whether his specu- 
lations overthrow my theories or not — entire freedom of thought limited 
by the inspiration and authority of God's sacred book. Then, over and 



IV ADDENDA. 

above that, an abundant faith that God can bring forth truth out of this 
controversy. What is a free pulpit but this ? Take the three points 
which make up the spirit of the Beformation, as it was afterwards de- 
veloped. First, opposition to the doctrine of the mass, the false use of 
sacraments. Here is a system which can symbolize itself, typify itself in 
the crucifix and candle, in postures of reverence before the plain table of 
the Lord. The true doctrine of the sacrament cannot symbolize itself. 
On one occasion Francis L, attended by the Bishop of Paris, went to the 
Church of St. Eustace when a celebrated minister, suspected of a Beforma- 
tion tendency, was to present his views of the Lord's Supper. He said, 
amidst the universal silence : ' In your service you say lift up your hearts 
— you bid them look above this table. You say, here is the memorial ; 
but the One to look to is above ! ' 

" The authority of the conscience, enlightened by the word of God, 
can be carried out in the same line of thought. Christians are asleep to 
the tendencies of the Church of Borne. The only way to resist these 
claims of Borne, which were resisted in the Beformation, and which have 
been almost smothered, is by an absolute liberty of priesthood — the abso- 
lute freedom of thought in the word of God, even although it may betray 
some persons into absurdity, still the admission of every one to read this 
Bible as they choose, providing they recognize its authority and its in- 
spiration, and the inalienable right to preach whatever and whenever 
they please ! " 

While Drs. Wall, and Geo. Fox, and Bobinson, and Gill, and Brew- 
ster, and Gale, etc., were laying foundations and defining the boundaries 
of their diverse churches, placing diversity thus in well-defined sect-form, 
as we come down the track of time a century or two, we find this same 
diversity increasing even in the same fold, so that an utter confusion of 
tongues is now found among the ministers and members of the same de- 
nomination. 

CONFUSION AMONG PEDO-BAPTISTS. 

[Outlines of a discussion in the Presbyterian Ministers' (Monday) Meeting, held at the 
Presbyterian Hall, Philadelphia, in the summer of 1S72, touching the questions, "Why 
are infants baptized? and, What is the duty of the Church relative to those baptized in 
infancy ?] 

The writer being present during a portion of this discussion, took 
notes as follows : The first speaker (name not obtained), whose essay re- 
specting the duty of parents and the Church toward their baptized chil- 
dren called forth the discussion, took positions as follows : 

He objected to Dr. Dale's view of the patriarchal baptism of house- 
holds — as their mode of introducing their, children to the patriarchal 
Church — and insists that the children of believers in all ages ' are born 
into the Church' i. e., by their natural birth. 

Hence, that baptism only recognizes their relation to the Church. He 
insists, therefore, that parents should so teach their children that they 
are members of the Church with their parents, and should so train them 
that they may prove to be spiritually regenerate from the womb. Bap- 
tism, to his view, is but a sign and seal of this prior engrafting into 
Christ. 

He cites from the ' Confession of Faith ' in corroboration of his view, 



ADDENDA. V 

the section which declares baptism to be a sign and seal of the covenant 
of grace, of engrafting into Christ, of regeneration, etc. 

Another brother followed, who insisted that, according to the Confes- 
sion of Faith, grace was not merely symbolized (as attained) but conferred 
according to that clause of the Confession of Faith. Chap, xxviii. sect. 
y. and vi. 

The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein 
it is administered ; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordi- 
nance, the grace promised is not only offered but really exhibited and con- 
ferred by the Holy Ghost to such, whether of age or infants, as that grace 
belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will, in his ap- 
pointed time. 

From this he argued that infants are really introduced into the invisi- 
ble Church, as well as the visible, by baptism : " That is," he says, " the 
parent may, through sense (this sensible emblem), exercise faith, and 
thereby the child be regenerated." Query. 

Is Popery more sensible and materialistic than this? Does it teach 
baptismal regeneration otherwise than does this expositor of the Confes- 
sion of Faith? And does the Confession of Faith teach just as this 
brother expounds? Yet he disclaims the doctrine of baptismal regenera- 
tion, still insisting, however, as he adds : " But faith is strengthened 
through the sense to the child's regeneration, as those of old, seeing one 
let down in their midst, the sight inspired faith to the healing of the 
palsied man." So the act of baptism inspires the faith of parents to the 
regeneration of the child. Note how the fancy of even a wise man may, 
at the behest of a theological dogma, connect spiritual regeneration with 
an act that, in itself, has no more relation to such regeneration than any 
other of all the moral acts of a whole life. Nay, infinitely less connection 
with it than the after moral teaching of parents and the internal co-work- 
ing influences of the Divine Spirit. But this speaker further contended 
that baptism, because of the faith connected with it — or that should be con- 
nected with it — was, therefore, truly the spiritual seal of regeneration. The 
absurdity of all such teaching, respecting baptism as a " sign " or " seal " 
of spiritual life or of spiritual blessings, may be seen in the light of the 
truth that works of love, and fruits of a living faith exhibited in the daily 
life of accountable agents, are alone true " signs " of a regenerated heart — 
and rituals never ; much less a something imprinted upon or done unto an 
unconscious child by another person. The reverse of this is simply 
Luther's farcical notion of infantile faith and infantile regeneration. So 
the twin doctrine of baptism being a " seal " of regeneration is seen to be 
equally absurd in the light of the truth that, as far as man's agency can 
give the seal, persevering obedience and love to God and man alone 
constitute the seal and signet of heart regeneration. The seal that God 
gives is simply the strengthening, sanctifying, and abiding power of the 
Holy Spirit. 

But this speaker, like the first, who read the essay upon the question, 
insisted that parents should, from the beginning, treat their children as 
children of God, not talking to them as though they needed conversion, 
or necessarily must be converted in after years, but as already redeemed, 
regenerate, and sanctified : thus to give the child an enlarged view of his 
relation to the covenant of redemption, and to the love and grace of God. 
Now this is precisely what every parent, whether Pedo- Baptist, Bap- 



VI ADDENDA. 

tist, or Quaker, should teach their children, and the one with as great 
faith in the faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God (a God that keeps 
covenant with all faithful parents), the one the same as the other. But 
the conception that your child is regenerate from birth, or because bap- 
tized in infancy, is intrinsically more baseless than the conceit of the 
faithful Quaker, that because he " walks before his household," and " is 
perfect " in that walk, as Abraham was, therefore he shall find his child 
growing up to maturity giving constant proofs of a moral regeneration 
from early life. 

The latter has confidence in God's blessing upon consistent and effec- 
tual means of grace ; the other, if he relies at all upon the baptism, relies 
upon that which, as a means of grace, is only imaginary, like a trusting 
to enchantment or magic. Yet of this latter species of trust the Church 
of England is full. So the Church of Luther and the Church of Rome, 
ay, and all sacramentarian and ritualistic churches. The writer of this, 
having never carried his children to the baptismal font, though connected 
with a church that requires it, has never doubted that children should 
be treated as children of God from the very first, for they are God's gilt, 
and God's workmanship from the first, and they should never be left to 
think otherwise than that they belong to God and with his people for a 
moment, and that Christian obedience, faith, trust, prayer, and the Chris- 
tian graces, are to be the characteristics of their lives, as much as of any 
redeemed saint. Thus teaching, the writer has not seen the time when 
his children, now mature, did not deem themselves a part of the church 
of which their parents were members, albeit they needed (at a maturcr 
age than infancy) a deeper searching of the Spirit and its baptizing power 
to qualify them for faithfully and earnestly fulfilling the responsibilities 
assumed in becoming avowed and covenanted members of the visible 
Church, in which covenant they now stand. 

But the speaker we criticise who teaches that baptism introduces both 
to the visible and invisible Church — to the visible especially, becaus-e 
adult believers are thus introduced — claims also, that parents and all 
adult members of the Church should hunt out the baptized children, and, 
watching over them, should encourage them to come to the Lord's Siq - 
per as members of the church with their parents. And he inquires, " Lo 
our religious teachers thus instruct children to come? and urge them to 
come? that they may impress upon them the responsibility of walking 
orderly and obediently as members of the household of faith, and »s 
having the vows of God upon them ? or do they rather surrender them 
without admonition and watchcare to the Evil One, to spend all their 
youth in dissoluteness and vice, hoping against hope ibr their future con- 
version by some marvellous display of grace countervailing all their 
parental negligence of moral and religious culture which was promised 
at their children's baptism?" 

We admit there was force in this questioning of those who practise 
infant baptism, since it surely must be a " vain oblation " to bring chil- 
dren to the font, and then turn them loose in a " wilderness of sin " and to 
the foster-care of Satan, as it would be no less hazardous for those who 
do not patronize the font to do so ; and if a moral end may be gained by 
making use of the superstition of Jew or Boman, this speaker was on 
the right path to turn the baptism of children to some good account. 
And his proposition to have them (the children) invited to the " supper " 



ADDENDA. Vll 

before they had formally accepted the church covenant, though a little 
loose Presbyterian-wise, was probably, for the sake of a moral impression 
on the " Jews by birth," very expedient, and commendable Christ-wise. 

But the first and second speakers differed respecting the reasons for 
infant baptism, the first not haying any definite view on that point, un- 
less it were to obay a command (a legal reason) and to place the chil- 
dren, not in the church, but under its watchcare, as candidates for future 
membership. The second speaker was sufficiently ritualistic and sacra- 
mentarian on the subject. He would have them baptized that they might 
thereby be born again, and introduced both into the visible and invisible 
Church. 

Another speaker, however (Rev. Phillips), expressed the greatest 
surprise at the positions taken by both the speakers, either that an infant 
is a child of regeneration and a spiritual child of God by its natural 
relation to its parents or by external baptism. He averred that the first 
of these positions — that the child, by its natural generation, though of 
Christian parentage, was a child of grace and of God — was more horrible 
than the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, for it made God's grace and 
the heavenly birth to be after the " will of the flesh," and the " will of 
man," contrary to the Apostle John's express teaching in the first chapter 
of John's Gospel. " Nor," says he, " is the doctrine that they become mem- 
bers of Christ by the sacrament of baptism in its fruits any better." He 
had left the Reformed (Dutch) Church, because it taught the doctrine of 
baptismal regeneration, or held to its equivalent, that we are in Christ's 
Church by the natural birth ; and to find these doctrines taught in the 
Presbyterian Church leads to the inquiry, " Have I bettered myself by 
the change?" 

Dr. Musgrave arose and said: " The whole difficulty is in confound- 
ing the visible and invisible Church." He protested against teaching 
children that they are Christians by virtue of their natural birth, " a most 
alarming doctrine," he affirms, most dangerous, infinitely worse than that 
of baptismal regeneration. 

Another aro5e and said that all had departed from the question, 
which was : " The duty of the Church to its baptized children.'" Another re- 
plied that they must know what baptism is, and what it does, in order to 
know their duty relative to baptized children. 

Dr. Dale argued that the obligation to train up a child in the way 
he should go rested upon parents, as parents, as much before as after 
their children were baptized ; it arose from the natural relation of the 
parent to the child, and of the child to the parent. The only question 
was, and herein was found all the utility of baptism, if any, that it served 
to impress on the parent the sense of this responsibility. It did not 
change or regenerate the child, nor did it change its relation to the 
Church, that it differed from that of any other child in that respect, only 
thereby the parental obligation might be more thoroughly impressed, 
and therefore more faithfully fulfilled. 

So Brother Phillips took Christ's words, " Born of water and of the 
Spirit," to refer in the first clause to baptism as a door to the Church's 
watchcare simply, and thereby to this school of grace. 

Thus Drs. Dale and Phillips only appeared to have clear and well- 
defined evangelical views of the province and design of baptism, on the 
presumption that baptism is an appointed ordinance of the Church. 



Vlll ADDENDA. 

But the first speaker (the one that opened the discussion), in his re- 
joinder to all these comments, refers again to the Confession of Faith, 
and asks attention to its teachings before brethren cry heresy, or danger, 
when they declaim against his view of being the "sons of God" by the 
natural birth, and, like the Confession of Faith, he refers to the " elect," as 
"born" in God's favor, and only introduced to the visible Church by 
ordinances, and that in their due time and order. 

Now in what a muddle do these brethren find themselves by assum- 
ing infant baptism to be a duty, an ordinance of God, and referring to 
the "Confession of Faith" for light, where they only find that they are 
thrown into an inextricable labyrinth of conjecture without defined moor- 
ings when they attempt to follow its requirements and teachings ! See 
the utter confusion that reigned in this meeting: one brother saying 
we are made members of the invisible Church by baptism ; but others 
saying we are not ! We are made members of the visible Church by 
baptism in infancy (or at maturity) ; (vs.) we are not, but w r ere members 
before. We have a right to the Lord's Supper because of our (infant) 
baptism, and (vs.) we have not, are only candidates for the ordinance. 
The doctrine that regeneration is connatural or synchronical with the 
natural birth is very dangerous and false ; and (vs.) it is not, but leads to 
a proper training of children for God. The doctrine of baptismal re- 
generation is a great illusion, and fearfully perilous, and (vs.) it is very 
true and useful. 

The " elect " are regenerated by baptism, or as a consequent of their 
baptism, while others are not at all affected by their baptism. The non- 
elect are neither regenerated by baptism, either at that or any other time. 
Thus drifting about, pressing the inquiry, what is the force and import 
of baptism (infant baptism in particular), without a word of instruction 
in Holy Writ respecting its obligation, its wherefore, or result, see huge 
denominations of Christians, learned in ancient and modern lore, agitated 
like a boiling sea (even in their own folds) by questions on the subjects 
that never have been and never can be definitively and satisfactorily 
answered. And these inquiries, what is the duty of the Church to its 
baptized children ? and in what relation do these children stand to the 
Church ? are suffered to puzzle sage doctors of divinity for ages, and so 
far from approximating to an answer there is, perhaps, in every decade, 
an increasing diversity of views respecting them. Why not answer these 
questions by the simplest principle of Christian duty and humble com- 
mon sense, and say, the duty of the Church, all churches, to their bap- 
tized children (or unbaptized), is to seek their immediate conversion to 
Christ, and enlistment in his service ; those of kin to you first, simply 
because you have readiest access to them, and are accountable to God 
and to them (at the judgment) for the influence you have exerted upon 
them. Carrying them to a font cannot increase their need of your moral 
influence, nor your obligation to exert it : but if you judge that thereby 
your moral influence may be increased for their salvation, you do not sin 
in having them baptized, or consecrated without baptism, as many ten 
thousands have done in all ages. See the customs of the ancient Cathar- 
ists, and the lately revised Episcopal formula for consecration without 
baptism. Also note the fact that the Congregational churches, of the 
West especially, are losing confidence in infant baptism, as a moral power 
either upon parent or child, or any part of the unquestioned divine law, 



ADDENDA. IX 

and are extensively discontinuing the practice, as the Methodist societies 
have ever granted full liberty respecting it, and baptize more on the 
profession of their faith than in infancy. 

To "hunt out the baptized children" and "watch" over them espe- 
cially, for the sake of bringing them into your church-fold, very much re- 
sembles state church custom, and ritualistic church custom, as witnessed 
in the record of the Pharisees of old, and of the formalistic Greek, Papal, 
and Lutheran Churches of modern times; but to "hunt out" sinners, 
estranged from Christ by wicked wor's, and enemies to God and to the 
experience of his love shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, 
very much resembles what Christ sent all his followers to do, and what 
would most likely bring salvation to our own households and to a world 
perishing in its sin. The former course (recommended by one of the 
speakers in the meeting) makes you consistent sacramentarians ; the 
other (seeking all the "lost") makes you consistent Christians. 

The latter course solves all the questions respecting rites by one 
simple principle, love to souls, and if you baptize any, you will do it to 
move men thereby to glorify God the more in their bodies and spirits, 
which are his, his by special redemption ; and if you baptize not, it 
may be because you would exalt in their view the moral above a cere- 
monial law, and recommend, rather, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, 
which really sanctifies and saves, and makes its recipients truly strong 
for Christ's work. 

But for truth's sake, and for the love of Christ's sake, and for charity's 
sake, cease receiving unquestioned a ritual law that none can define or 
expound, and which teaches as the Confession of Faith, chap, xxviii. sect, 
v., that " although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance 
(baptism), yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it 
as that no person can be regenerated or saved without it, or that all that 
are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated ; " or that " grace is really ex- 
hibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost (to those baptized) whether 
of age or infants, as that grace belongeth unto, etc." Open thine eye, 
Christian brother; to see the incongruity of teaching that it is a "great 
sin " to neglect baptism, yet that we may be regenerated and saved with- 
out it, and therefore " saved " in a great sin, yet that the " counsel of God's 
own will confers grace by the Holy Ghost," on both infants and adults 
receiving baptism, and thus (inferentially) is their " election made sure." 
May the rising light of a true spiritual illumination lift all churches 
from the bewilderment of such manifest Augustinian and Papal creeds 
and teachings. 

A CATECHISM COMMENDED TO ALL RITUALISTS AND 
SACRAMENTARIANS. 

Q. During how many centuries of earth's earliest ages was there no 
ceremonial law? or, at least, none that is left on record? 

A. Twenty. 

Q. Was not heaven open that angels might "ascend and descend," 
and saints from earth ascend thereto during all that period ? 

A. Yes ; and Enoch attained to that holiness in his walk with God 
that "he was taken" and "ascended" to the glory prepared for him 
before the world was. 



X ADDENDA. 

Q. "When Abraham was commanded to circumcise himself and his 
offspring, did his personal circumcision render him more a sanctified 
man than he had been for twenty-four years prior to his circumcision ? 

A. No, in nowise. The promise that "all nations" should be blessed 
in him was made to Abraham while in uncircumcision, twenty-four years 
before he received the law of circumcision. 

Q. Why was a more extended ritual law given to Moses than had 
been given to Abraham, as the lafp of oblations, baptisms, and sacrifices 
for atonement? 

A. It was added because of transgression, as a partial (yet " weak " 
and "imperfect") defence against surrounding idolatry, and utter apos- 
tasy from God with its attendant corruptions. 

Q. For how long a time was this ritual economy to continue ? 

A. " Until the seed (Christ) should come," through whom all the 
" gospel " promises to Abraham were to be fulfilled. 

Q. Did the gospel promise make any allusion to the land of Canaan, 
or to circumcision ? 

A. None at all. It was infinitely broader, promising to the "believ- 
ing " seed of Abraham " all nations," when circumcision, through pre- 
vailing faith, should come to " avail nothing." 

Q. Did that covenant with Abraham, which included circumcision 
and the promise of Canaan, improve upon or enlarge the faith covenant? 

A. It was infinitely less valuable than the latter, but was of value as 
bearing a promise to Abraham and his seed of the " life that now is," 
while the other was pregnant with the promise of the eternal life and 
blessedness of the whole Church of the living God.* 

Q. Did the ritual "law covenant" hasten the "fulness of time" when 
the faith covenant could reveal all its blessings in Christ ? 

A. Nay. It only operated as a preservative during the necessary post- 
ponement of the blessings of the faith covenant — i. e., until a Saviour for 
" all nations " could be received among men, Gentiles as well as Israel- 
ites. 

Q. The "law covenant" being imperfect, did its manifestation (ratifi- 
cation) in any sense mar or lessen the fulness or value of the faith cove- 
nant? 

A. No ! The circumcision covenant made twenty-four years after, or 
the " law covenant " made four hundred and thirty years after the prom- 
ise covenant, served their purpose but could not disannul or render the 
promise covenant in any respect deficient or " of none effect." If man is 
unfaithful, " God is faithful, and cannot deny himself." 

Q. Did the righteousness of Enoch, Noah, Melchisedek, Abraham, or 
Moses, come through sacrifices or a law covenant ? 

A. No. Their righteousness was attained ere they had obeyed or ob- 
served any ceremonial law. 

Q. Did perfection come to Israel by observing the Jewish ritual law ? 

A. No. That law was but a preparatory school, adapted to a rudimen- 
tal education, to be used as a breakwater or shield against surrounding 

* The lesser blessing (unsought) may, by the divine love, be added to the 
greater. Solomon asked icisdom, the greater blessing; God added "length of 
days, riches and honor." But "is not the life more than meat" or "rai- 
ment?" If Paul "sows spiritual things," is it not "a small matter," though 
needful, that he should reap (rteeiye) the •''temporal?" 



ADDENDA. XI 

idolatry, or as an alphabet and diagrams in learning to read and expound 
the moral law, which learned, they no longer need the alphabet or the 
diagrams before used. 

Q. Is the moral law, obedience to which is to bless all nations, binding 
upon all nations? 

A. Yes ; and ever was, and ever will be. 

Q, Was the ceremonial law of circumcision (or baptism) ever binding 
on any but the children (posterity) of Abraham? 

A. No. It was to be the distinctive badge of Abraham's lineage. 

Q. Why binding on them ? , 

A. As a distinction between his posterity and other nations for good or 
evil, so long as that distinction was required in fulfilling God's tem- 
poral promises to Abraham ; and until the time should come when all 
other nations should begin to inherit the greater blessings made to Abra- 
ham through Christ. 

Q. Were spiritual, blessings sealed to Abraham's posterity by circum- 
cision ? 

A. Not at all. The covenant of circumcision was a recognition (a 
"seal" or signet) of Abraham's personal righteousness, without which 
neither temporal nor spiritual blessings would have been promised ; but 
Abraham's natural posterity, who were without righteousness, received 
no spiritual blessing sealed to them through circumcision : this is self- 
evident. 

Q. On what basis or condition were spiritual blessings promised and 
sealed to Abraham and to his posterity ? 

A. On the condition or banis of faith, and that basis only. 

Q. Are these spiritual blessings equally the inheritance of the Gentiles 
since circumcision ceased ? 

A. Most assuredly. Herein is all the glory and blessedness of the 
gospel, that it secures the righteousness of both, and all the sequences 
thereof to all nations equally and alike, irrespective of rite, ceremony, 
birth, or lineage. 

Q. If it had been necessary to extend circumcision to " all nations," 
would not infinite love have made the circumcision connatural or con- 
genital ? 

A. This would seem to have been the dictate of mercy and good-will, 
for why should the human frame be created unworthy to be pronounced 
"good," and therefore in need of mending by man? Besides, if circum- 
cision were universally extended, it would lose its significance as a badge. 

Q. Does Christ give any specific law of externals, to distinguish his 
people from others ? 

A. No. None save a godly walk and conversation, manifesting thereby 
the spirit and mind of Christ ; showing thus a death to sin and selfish- 
ness, and a new birth to holiness. 

Q. Is the observance of any ceremony or obedience to any ritual now 
a moral duty ? 

A. Nay ; save in accordance " as a man thinketh," or is internally per- 
suaded. The correlative external law is wanting, and an assumed obliga- 
tion to one is the creation of erroneous instruction based on the opinions 
and commandments of men. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, 
baptism nor unbaptism, eucharistic observance or non-observance, avail- 
eth aught, but the cross of Christ, in which alone salvation is found, and 
saints may truly glory.. 



Xll ADDENDA. 

Q. What is the fruit of transferring the obligations of the moral law 
and moral duty to sacraments and externals in religion ? 

A. It makes void the moral law ; substitutes for the true spiritual cir- 
cumcision a circumcision of no possible value to-day ; and substitutes for 
the true spiritual baptism a cold and worthless shadow or type ; and for 
the true spiritual bread that really comes from heaven that earthly bread 
that priests assume to consecrate, which when a man eateth, " like one 
that dreameth that he eats, he awakes, and his soul is empty." 

Q. Is the "doctrine of baptisms" in the New Testament one that has 
exclusive reference to that which is external, or does it centre in that 
which is internal ? 

A. The word baptismos, which signifies external baptism (which was a 
Jewish custom), is found in only four passages of the New Testament, 
viz.: Mark vii. 4, 8; Heb. vi. 2, and ix. 10; while the word baptisma, 
which is transferred to the English Testament by dropping the last 
letter of the word, is found in the following passages: Matt. iii. 7 ; xx. 
22, 23 ; xxi. 25 : Mark i. 4 ; x. 38, 39 ; xi. 30 : Luke iii. 3 ; vii. 29 ; xii. 
50 ; xx. 4 : Acts i. 22 ; x. 37 ; xiii. 24 ; xviii. 25 ; xix. 3, 4 : Rom. vi. 4 : 
Eph. iv. 5 : Col. ii. 12 : 1 Pet. iii. 21 : in all which passages Dr. Dale and 
Prof. J. W. Beecher affirm that it (being a new word, found first in the 
New Testament) refers exclusively to religious doctrine, or that baptism 
which is internal. 

Q. Can there be a positive law relative to externals, which yet is un- 
defined and ambiguous, and open to endless " doubtful disputations ? " 

A. The ambiguity of any pretended law would render it a nullity ; and 
to urge such a pretended law would be but a mockery of the human in- 
telligence and man's moral conscience. 

Q. That Matt, xxviii. 19 refers to purifying with water is a mere 
matter of human opinion (of some) ; so all the after questions of subjects, 
modes, administrators, design, effect, etc. ; if this be allowed, it opens the 
way for endless human conceit, human devices, adjuncts, and pretended 
effects, leading to incessant jars upon the subject. Can we suppose the 
infinitely wise Teacher intended to tantalize his people by necessitating 
these worthless queryings about that which is external ? 

A. It would be infinitely derogatory to his character and aim. 

Q. Is there to be found in the New Testament a specific command for 
infant baptism ? 

A. Pedo-Baptists do not, and dare not, assert that there is. 

Q. Are Pedo-Baptists in accord with respect to the age, the mode, the 
object, and the relations into which infant baptism introduces its sub- 
jects? 

A. No. There is a labyrinth of confusion upon the subject (see Dis- 
cussion at Ministers' Meeting, Philadelphia, 1872). 

Q. Are the children of Christian parents born more holy than other 
children ? 

A. No. All are born after the flesh, by the blood and will of man ; 
i. «., of the parents. " Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my 
mother conceive me." " Death passed upon all, for all have sinned." 

Q. Is sin attributable as guilt to those who know neither good nor 
evil ? 

A. This would be infinitely unworthy of God, the Father and Judge 
of all : " The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father ; the eoul that 



ADDENDA. X1U 

sinneth it shall die." [The "all" that have "sinned," then, are all 
those who have reached the age of moral accountability.] 

Q. Can imputed sin, or actual sin, be washed away by the waters of 
baptism ? 

A. It would be folly to talk about purifying one who is not morally 
unclean, or to speak of a physical act of any creature as cleansing from 
moral obliquity. 

Q. Docs the faith of a parent work to the saving of a child ? 

A. It does not cause God, the infinite loving Father of all, to love one 
child more than another, or to seek or will to save one child more than 
another ; but the child of the believing parent, increasing in years, and 
beholding the living faith and obedience of the parent, is thereby con- 
stantly influenced, and drawn to the same faith and obedience. The 
parents' righteousness is the moral lever that God uses to lift heavenward 
the child ; " God also working with them." The needful means of grace 
may be fatally lacking in the case of the unbelieving parents. 

Q. Ought all parents, whether believing in baptism or not, to conse- 
crate their children to God, in their earliest years, and seek their sancti- 
fication and eternal welfare from their very birth ? 

A. Unquestionably they ought, and all considerate and well-instructed 
believing parents do. 

Q. Does God bless children the more because the ceremony of baptism 
has been performed upon them ? 

A. No, in nowise ; no more than the circumcised Jews were blessed 
because of their circumcision. The infant circumcised received no 
credit in heaven for that, nor any spiritual blessing on earth, any further 
than he " walked in the steps " of his believing father Abraham, even in 
the faith which he (Abraham) had before he was circumcised. So with 
the infant of to-day ; God blesses the faithfulness of all parents, circum- 
cised and uncircumcised, baptized and unbaptized, alike. 

Q. What is the duty of parents to their children that have been bap- 
tized ? 

A. To train them up in the love and fear of God. 

Q. What is the duty of parents toward children that have not been 
baptized ? 

A. To train them up in the love and fear of God.* 

Q. What is the duty of unbelieving parents ? 

A. To consecrate themselves and their children to God ; to deem the 
eternal life paramount to the life that now is, and God's law the " higher 
law" by which both parent and child should seek to live ! There is but 
one law for baptizer and non-baptizer, believer and unbeliever in this 
matter. 

Q. If baptized children are growing up impenitent, what is the duty 
of the Church toward them ? 

A. To seek their conversion, and no less to seek the conversion and 
salvation of all others. 

* Giving up children to God in baptism increases no man's moral obligation. 
It may and may not be a prompter or occasion of his more faithfully fulfilling 
his obligation. The simple fact of parentage creates the highest possible 
obligation. No ceremony can increase it. No lack of ceremony can annul it. 
Let every parent, as for his soul's life, and the soul's life of his child, remem- 
ber this. 



XIV ADDENDA. 

WHAT CAN BE LAW? 

Nothing can be moral or unending positive law but that which is in- 
trinsic, essential and universal. All externals must be circumstantial in 
the nature of things, and when circumstances afford a reason for non- 
obedience, the positiveness of the requirement does not exist. There is, 
therefore, an utter absurdity in the answer given by Whitefield, Barnes, 
etc., to the inquiry, " Is water-baptism necessary to an entrance into the 
kingdom of heaven ? " " Yes, when it may be had."* 

Is it not amazing that such teachers will propose as a condition of en- 
tering heaven a " bodily exercise," a " making clean the outside," which 
must be wholly dependent on very variant circumstances, as well as the un- 
ending conceits of men who undertake to answer what that baptism is ? 
All the virtue there can be in water-baptism is derived from spiritualizing 
it, on the part of the administrator. And so of the eucharist, or any 
other mere symbol. The symbol does not sanctify of itself, no more than 
a pattern makes a garment, or a picture of food feeds the body. Nor can 
a moral duty be spiritualized, or made of another duty. To feed the 
hungry, clothe the naked, "bring the poor that are cast out to thy house," 
and shelter them, is no symbol, and requires no spiritualizing to be 
known as a duty. So to preach, or sing, or pray, or read the Scriptures, 
and use direct means to learn and teach the way of salvation to men, re- 
quires no sjDiritualizing ; it requires already a spirit attuned and ener- 
gized of God to the work ; that is all ! And such works are directly and 
intrinsically useful to those suffering bodies and hungering souls, whether 
you can explain a symbol so as to make it useful or not ! But rites or em- 
blems are of no worth unless rightly expounded, and we doubt whether 
the Almighty is perfectly " well pleased" with most of the expounders 
of rites and symbols. We doubt whether he would be exceedingly angry 
if they should let the rites entirely alone, which they have so long used 
to the mangling and marring of Zion ! 

Their obligation can be but circumstantial, as we have said, and were 
safely omitted by the thief on the cross, and many other repenting sinners 
dying in a prison, a wilderness, or desert, where no church administra- 
tors of rites are ; or among those who, like the " Friends," do not believe 
in rites. There can be no " positive " obligation in such cases ; nor do 
churches, when torn by internal factions, or destitute of "regular" ad- 
ministrators of ordinances, count themselves remiss for neglecting the 
" positive " laws ! ! By such illustrative cases, the impropriety of calling 
a ritual observance a positive law, and necessary for heaven " when it 
may be had," is seen. 

Suppose that, instead of " tithing mints " and washing the flesh as a 
duty and a door to heaven, or eating sacramental bread that we may find 

* Robinson says (p. 303) : " Retaining the" necessity of -water-baptism to 
salvation exposed the Catholics to almost insurmountable difficulties in find- 
ing salvation possible to all past saints. Some of them claimed that Old Tes- 
tament saints might be cleansed by spiritual baptism in Hades. The Gnostics 
used the term bajjtisvia generically. They spoke of eight baptisms, viz.: 1. 
Humerus, i. e., of the river; 2. Flaminis, i. e., of fire ; 3. Sanguivaris, i. e., of 
blood ; 4. Diluvium, i. e., of a flood ,• 5. Moses, i. e., unto Moses; 6. Legalis, i. 
e., of the law; 7. Christus, i. e., unto Christ; 8. Penitentia, i. e., of repentance. 
Ambrose, one of the Gnostics, said that ' to will is to do, in the case of bap- 
tism ; ' making baptism really internal." 



addenda; xv 

Christ, we should all simply repent of sin, and thus receive the Holy 
Ghost, cleansing our hearts and giving us heavenly bread, and prompting 
us to all works of faith, love, and obedience— without any explained or 
unexplained symbols — would we not be as acceptable in God ; s sight and 
man's as if we had consented to receive the badge andivashing of a sect? 

The Quaker Grellet could gain a hearing of the Pope himself, 
when, perhaps, a ritualistic Lutheran or an Episcopalian could not have 
gained it, and he preached Christ and righteousness and peace unto him. 
A William Penn could gain the ear of King Charles of England, and 
plead for mercy in behalf of all persecuted dissenters, when, perhaps, no 
other dissenter could have gained it? A J. J. Gurney could get a 
hearing in Eepresentative Hall at Washington, where he preached 
Christ to Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and other tall senators and 
representatives of the nation, when no canonically baptized " priest " 
would have dared to ask such a hearing. So a Quakeress — Sarah Smiley 
— could get access to a Presbyterian pulpit in Brooklyn, N. Y., and preach 
Christ there, when it is probable that no other woman in America could 
have done it. 

The baptizers are enclosed in narrower folds than the non-baptizers 
need to be. God's seal is on the non-baptizers as clearly as on others, 
and who shall assume that the non-baptizers are not as correct in their 
interpretation and application of " positive " law and moral law as others ? 
Is it consistent to suppose that the emblem and the thing emblematized 
are both needed at the same time ? 

Is the model needed after the building is finished ? or the pattern when 
the garment is already put on ? We can have all the benefit of spiritu- 
alizing old customs, sacrifices, and symbols without keeping up the 
customs themselves ? We need not circumcise, nor carry a cross, in order 
to preach the true circumcision and the cross of Christ to men ! Those 
reformers, above named, thought it a great step to give the sacrament of 
the supper in both parts — the cup as well as the bread — to the laity ; 
and it was, for it ended the scandalous monopoly of the wine-cup by the 
bibulous priests, who before had drunk the wine, and only gave the 
minute bread-tokens to the people! It is a great thing oft to even 
change the custom, if all is not made right thereby. To stir up and drain 
off a part of the filth of stagnant pools is better than allowing utter cor- 
ruption to remain. Hence, the Protestant view of the sacraments is, in 
many denominations, better than the Papal ; yet a ritualistic, sacramenta- 
rian spirit is far too common, and holds too much sway in the Protestant 
churches. 

Zwingle and CEcolampadius thought to save the sacrament of the supper 
by putting the soul of it (which they gave to it) uppermost, i. e., by ob- 
serving it without an idolatrous trust in it. This was a great step toward 
reform from the Papal doctrine ; yet, as shown by the sequel, it was only 
to annul the sacrament, or else give it lease of life to live again in the 
High Church sacramentarianism of Protestant Christendom. The magic 
or charm of the sacrament was not thus to be destroyed, the evil spirit not 
thus exorcised. To-day the sacraments are more accounted of by three- 
fourths of professed Protestants than the preaching of the word, or the 
life of faith and holiness. If a sacramental meeting once a quarter be 
attended, it is too oft assumed that all the others may be safely omitted. 
So, also, the weightier matters of the law are supplanted, as justice, 



XVI ADDEKDA. 

mercy, love, peace, and fellowship among Christians. They think that 
God is pleased with the sacrament even if fellowship is disrupted thereby. 
And to impose that as a positive law on the Christian Church which 
scarce any two denominations interpret and practise in a similar manner, 
whether baptism or the supper, is, evidently, from the very confusion on 
the subject, " teaching for doctrine the commandments of men." 

Teaching thus the Church has swung from one conceit or pretence for 
water-baptism to another, and from one mode or custom of observing the 
sacramental supper to another, and it is evident that none can tell what 
the "great commission" means, if applied to the external baptism, nor 
how or when, or how oft to eat the bread and drink the cup sacrament- 
ally, for no New Testament law defines either. Yet are they lured all 
the way by a vain imagination of obeying the last command of Christ. 
So in respect to its object, Wall constantly reiterates that infants come 
into the regenerated state by baptism. JSeander and Gale, more discern- 
ing, deny it ; and thus have the advantage of Dr. Wall. Albeit these 
do not deny that this was the doctrine of the early fathers that practised 
baptism at all. Wall quotes the fathers as fearing that children might 
come short of heaven through the neglect of their parents in not having 
them baptized, and himself indorses their fears. Pelagius denies that 
infants had sins to be purified by baptism, yet, in order that they may 
be fully fitted for heaven, thinks they ought to be baptized ! Baptists 
deny that unconscious infants can be purified or benefited by being bap- 
tized, any more than they can commune and be benefited by it. 

Pedo-Baptists think they should be baptized to render their parents 
faithful, and unconsciously to seal a covenant between the infants them- 
selves and God ; albeit they are not fitted for communion thereby, albeit they 
are already partakers of the merits of the atonement to the justification 
of their natures, corrupted as they were by natural inheritance. 

Such is the chaos of thought and reasoning upon this subject, all beto- 
kening as dense a darkness and entanglement as those were in who 
speculated and queried as to what sort of dinner Christ had had brought 
to him when he said, " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." These 
baptizers are in as dense a wilderness respecting what sort of baptism 
Christ enjoined in the great commission ; and they have mistaken it in 
the same manner. 

THE CHARGES PREFERRED. 

We charge those who claim to be Christians, and are Jews respecting 
baptism, with opening the flood-gates of controversy for an unending jar 
about things to no profit. We charge them with encumbering Christ's 
Church with an exotic plant, that grows luxuriant in many a sink -hole 
and morass of moral degeneracy and fleshly corruption, and countenanc- 
ing an endless twaddle about a ritual law that Christ abolished in his 
death, and therefore has no actual being save by the commandment of 
men who have erred through their ritual blindness. We charge them 
with creating an engine of priestcraft and persecution in the name of a 
ritual law, and thus feeding fuel to the fires of sectarian strife that rage 
in the form of intolerance, bigotry, superstition, persecution, and every 
species of civil and spiritual despotism. We charge them not only with 
the sin and folly of marring Zion's peace to no profit, but also starving 
and tantalizing millions who hunger for salvation through the power of 



ADDENDA. XV11 

the Holy Ghost, by offering them elemental water instead of spiritual life, 
and a stone (a heart unregenerate) instead of that "bread that comes 
down from heaven!" And, perchance, Christian reader, these charges 
stand in all their force against thine own church to-day. 

All admit that the symbolic water-baptism is not baptism, without the 
internal or spiritual baptism from God ; that the heart still defiled is not 
even (canonically) baptized by any outward rite ; and that, if the inter- 
nal baptism lias been received, the lack of the external baptism cannot 
efface it, or render it null or of less effect. Why not, then, take the real, 
baptism, that makes all hearts one, and leave the other to those who 
" war after the flesh," and love " doubtful disputations," and cling to 
their " vain oblations " and ceremonials the closer, the less of the Holy 
Spirit and of a holy life is required by their ritual observances. 

CAMPBELLISM IN MOURNING — LAMENTATIONS OVER THE 
TEACHINGS OF DR. DALE^S SURVEY OF THE DOCTRINE OF 
BAPTISMS. 

[Extract from the Christian Standard (of Cinn.), March 29, 1873.] 

" If eis then, after the words baptiso and baptisma, always introduces 
the 'element' of the immersion — i. e., that whereinto a thing is im- 
mersed — then there will be as many distinct and different immersions or 
baptisms as there are different elements. [Precisely.] This will fill the 
New Testament with very many baptisms unknown to the world to this 
day, till this extravagant conceit came into being. ... If eis always 
introduces into elements, then no purpose of baptism is anywhere ex- 
pressed at all. [Right, it expresses state or condition]. . . . All these 
inevitable conclusions are so monstrous, so fatal [to discipleism] that it 
is beyond amazement how any thoughtful man can accept them and not 
shrink back from them with alarm. What sad reality is here ? We see 
Christian, God-fearing men go to the terrible extreme of preferring to 
accept such monstrous conclusions, rather than give up /ery lately intro- 
duced corruptions of a divine ordinance, which they now love and prac- 
tise because of tradition from their fathers!" 

ANNIHILATION OF THE ORDINANCE. 

" According to this novel theory what the use of water in the ordinance 
is, is entirely unknown in the New Testament. Whether it is to be 
sprinkled or poured, or otherwise applied to the candidate, or whether he 
is to be immersed in it, is wholly unknown, and without any authority. 
[Right, once more.] Whether it is to be put on the head, breast, foot, 
or any other part, is equally, utterly in the dark, and unauthorized. 
[Right again.] Furthermore, it is absolutely unknown whether it is to 
be applied to the candidate at all. If, with this doctrine, a minister 
pours water in the ordinance, where is his authority for such an act, and 
where his authority from God's word for applying it at all to the person 
to be baptized? 'Not one syllable. [Right again.] To pour the 
water on the ground, as a libation, is, according to this doctrine, as de- 
fensible, as well authorized, and as reasonable. . . . This doctrine then, 
it is clear, utterly annihilates the visible ordinance in any form. . . . And 
now, in all charity and in the fear of God, we hesitate not to declare, 



XVlll ADDENDA. 

that such a conclusion is worthy of such a bad progress, and of such per- 
sistent effort against a divine ordinance, and against a world of light. It 
is fitting that it should be brought to this last deep shame of an utter 
annihilation of this blessed, beautiful, exalted ordinance of the Lord. . . 
This sinful, long-persistent departure from truth in anti-immersion, this 
bitter war, this insane rejection of all light and proof, has culminated 
inevitably in this last crowning delusion." 

Correctly does the above critic read the result of the declaration that 
baptisma and baptiso always introduce the element into which a thing is 
immersed or baptized, and thus establishes the " divers baptisms " of the 
law and gospel, of the Greeks and Hebrews, of ancient and modern times. 
And very clearly also does he see that this doctrine wholly annuls the 
assumed law for water-baptism in any form, or for any reason whatever. 
And we most appositely apply his own words, and say, " it is fitting that " 
that most shallow, superstitious, obtuse, and bigoted idolatry of a rite, 
should be brought at last to " this deep shame" of an "utter annihila- 
tion " of what has ever been a source of unutterable folly, weakness and 
spiritual blindness to the Christian Church. The light of truth on the 
subject, as seen above, so begins to shine, at length, that it will be im- 
possible to save that writer's idol, and let him be wise, and before his 
idolatry becomes utterly nauseating, and a stink in the nostrils of all 
devout men, evince his prudence and discernment by giving up the 
worthless idol. 



BAPTISMAL THESES — CONCLUSIONS REACHED IN THE FORE- 
GOING WORK. 

1. Two baptisms are specially known to the Church, viz. : the baptism 
of water, which is a symbol, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The 
baptism of the cross is auxiliary to the latter. 

2. The baptism of water commenced with Moses. He was the first, as 
he is the only authorized law-giver that has required it, and the aim of 
the requirement was evidently partly hygienic, and partly symbolical or 
typical of the moral regeneration of purifying by the blood of Christ and 
the Holy Spirit. 

3. John's baptism was repentance baptism, and in connection therewith 
he used the Jewish typical baptism, and therefore he was not the media- 
tor of any new covenant, or new and separate dispensation, but when he 
preached repentance, and by the word and baptismal sign pointed to the 
"Lamb of God," he prepared the way for that gospel dispensation or 
" kingdom of heaven," which was then " even at the door." 

4. Christ's baptism, himself assures us, was the antitype of Moses and 
John's baptism, so far as they were typical, for it is specifically the bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost, or at least, is not completed, without the renew- 
ing and sealing energy of the Holy Ghost. 

5. Water-baptism, as a religious rite, was ever a symbol of spiritual 
purifying, and the spiritual baptism alone secures that purifying. 

6. The apostles and early Jewish Christians at first continued typical 
baptism, as they did the passover, circumcision, and other Jewish rites, 
for an age or more after the legal dispensation was, in fact, fulfilled, and 
only lingered in a gradual decay and evanishment, as by the Divine 
economy the kingdom of Christ was supplanting it. 



ADDENDA. XIX 

7. Jesus established no new symbol baptism ; this was neither neces- 
sary, nor consistent with his specifically spiritual dispensation and reign ; 
he simply submitted to the purifying of the law, and to the feasts and 
customs as a loyal Jew, until the type dispensation should be ended in 
his crucifixion.' Though a priest of his own kingdom, he neither sacri- 
ficed nor baptized any but himself, for in him was centred and by him 
fulfilled all sacrifices, and all circumcisions, and all baptisms. 

8. In the Great Commission (Matt, xxviii. 19), Jesus Christ com- 
manded no baptism with water, but a renovation of the nations by the 
purifying power and influence of the gospel attended by the promised 
presence and energies of the Holy Spirit. 

9. Christ having fulfilled or made provision for the universal pro- 
clamation of the saving baptism (into Christ, or into " Father, Son and 
Holy Spirit "), and for its universal prevalence and supremacy, there is 
now but "one Lord, one faith, one baptism," that baptism of merging 
into Christ and into his true Church. 

10. Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, was not sent to baptize 
(with water as himself testifies) but having received the Great Commis- 
sion, and Christ's " anointing " to qualify him therefor, he was sent " to 
open the eyes " of Jew and Gentile to the truth and " to turn them from 
darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God " — i. e., to en- 
lighten and regenerate them — " that they might obtain an inheritance 
among all them that are sanctified" 

11. All questions and contentions about ritual baptism should only 
have been incident to an incipient and rudimentary state of the Church 
while under Moses, or when merging from Judaism to the full freedom 
of the Christian dispensation. The Church of Christ should have left 
shadows and types, and pressed on to that perfection in the Christian life 
which the power and indwelling of the Holy Ghost is able to secure. 

12. Eegeneration, sanctification, Christian love, Christian union, and 
eternal life are gained only by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, with all 
types, and all inter-penetration of a ceremonial law, which is but of the 
"letter that killeth," left out. 

13. Water-baptism may be used, in liberty, if Christians can use such 
liberty, and not seek to impose their ceremony upon others, as they may 
use the formula of a creed, or modes of worship, in the same way ; but if 
allowed to abridge Christian fellowship, or crucify Christian love, or ob- 
served as a yoke of bondage to a duty, it thereby makes void God's real 
law of love and charity, of holiness and practical righteousness, and the 
use of this and other rites in such way becomes a sin, which should be 
repented of and rites omitted until such time as Christians have light or 
grace enough to use them in liberty and charity. 

14. It is a grave and fatal delusion to substitute water-baptism for the 
spiritual, in the hope thereby of regenerating the souls of men to holiness, 
and to teach that thus they are to secure eternal salvation. 

15. That which is termed the Lord's Supper was originally either the 
passover or the Christian's "feast of love and' fellowship; " therefore 
Christians should observe it, if at all, in freedom, not as obeying com- 
mandment, but as a voluntary act of professing Christ, or manifesting 
love to Christ, and to our fellow-saints and fellow-heirs of the same 
grace and glory. So all kings, princes, and the families of the earth 
make voluntary feasts to manifest kinship, and increase fellowship one 
with another. 



XX ADDENDA. 



THE CREED QUESTION. 

When all Christian believers come to think precisely alike on all reli- 
gious questions, or, rather, when independent thought, on the part of 
every Christian, save some priest or pope, has altogether ceased, then, 
and not till then, can a creed he written by man that shall receive the 
assent of "all evangelical Christians." 

To make creeds tests of Christian fellowship, and bases of Christian 
or Church union, should never be attempted. 

The covenant of a Church in which it avouches Jehovah to be 
Sovereign, Jesus Christ to be Kedeemer and Saviour, and the Holy Spirit 
to be Sanctifier and Comforter, and in which, also, the Church promises 
to walk in love and faithfulness toward all the household of faith, and 
holily and unblamably before God and man, is the true and all-sufficient 
bond of union. No man-written creed can unite all Christians. No such 
creed is tantamount to the teachings of inspiration. Any number of 
believers in Christ may unite in the adoption of an uninspired creed ; 
but it is folly to presume that all Christians can or ought to receive and 
assent to it. A portion of the household of faith may adopt such a creed, 
expressive of views, by them deemed very important, as having a 
momentous moral bearing, provided they do not reproach or condemn 
uncharitably those not adopting it, but hold steadfastly to the principle 
of unrestricted Christian felloivship. There is no divine law requiring all 
Christians to be in one organization (to assume that there is is Popery), 
but the divine law does require that all Christians should love and fellow- 
ship each other. Yet this fellowship need not be sacramental fellowship ; 
that also is Popery or Judaism. 

Unrestricted sacramental fellowship is not within the reach of those on 
earth, still compassed with human infirmities. This vain attempt has 
served as an ignis fatuus before champions of Christian union long 
enough. Doctrinal views when written in creeds, and set up as a stand- 
ard to rally adherents, may serve a good purpose, where the truths pro- 
pounded are momentous, but owing to modifications or variations of 
human thought all such standards are soon outgrown, and thus in the 
future (as in the past) it ever must be. Where are the " Schoolmen ? " 
and the " Supralapsarian Predestinarians " to-day ? The occasion of 
church organization on such issues is gone by forever : as soon it will be, 
we trust, on the question of rites. 

A union creed (attempted) should be so written as to accommodate the 
greatest diversity of belief in the household of faith, that human charity 
can reach, as near all that love Christ and his cause as practicable. 
Otherwise, if you desire to express your own view by a specific statement, 
let every member of the Church you walk with also have his specific 
statement of faith, and thus in candor and frankness let each have his 
own creed. He has equal right with thee to the imposition of a creed 
upon the brotherhood. Most of the pretended union creeds are the 
sheerest mockeries, expressing the real sentiments or views of the writer, 
perhaps, but of how many more, it might be hazardous to say. Most of 
the professed union creeds and church unions (as recently published in 
the Union Era, for example) are simply transcripts of epitomized Con- 
gregational and Presbyterian Church manuals. They oft retain, more- 
over, the crude, tritheistic, and predestinarian statement of two or three 



ADDENDA. XXI 

hundred years ago. They nearly all include the Papal law of sacra- 
ments, and niillennarian doctrine respecting the resurrection and the 
final judgment. Yet none dare say that respecting these, the holiest 
men Christ has ever called to his kingdom and glory have not, and do 
still differ. 

Asserting our right to present a platform or statement of faith, such as 
the present day demands (in America) which shall also be as near the 
untrammelled union basis as our feeble insight can make it, we present 
the following : 

Form of Covenant and Declaration of Principles for a local 
church or congregation of saints, organized for the purpose of 
maintaining Christian worship, fellowship and labors. 

Kecognizing the honesty of purpose and right of all existing church 
organizations to proclaim each their own faith, to worship God according 
to the dictates of their own consciences, to organize churches after the 
model of simple or more complex forms, if Christian love be not hindered, 
and Christian freedom be not trammelled, and thereby personal moral 
accountability is maintained, we choose so to do, and do now unite and 
enter into fellowship for Christian labors of love in the field and sphere 
where God has placed us, or shall hereafter place us, by mutually pledg- 
ing ourselves to the work of Christ, in adopting the following covenant : 

COVENANT. 

We do now, in the presence of God and this congregation, solemnly ac- 
knowledge Jehovah to be our God, and enter into covenant to- love and 
serve him forever ! YV T e receive the Divine Father as our Father, our 
Friend, and our chosen portion forever ; the Lord Jesus Christ in all his 
mediatorial offices, prophet, priest, and king, as our only Intercessor, 
and Saviour ; the Holy Spirit as our Sanctifier, Comforter, and Guide. 
We receive the brethren in Christ as our brethren, his friends as our 
friends. We submit to the government of Christ in his Church, and to 
the regular administration of it in this church in particular, so long as 
we remain members thereof. We promise by this covenant to attend 
the regular and special meetings of the church, and in all respects to con- 
duct ourselves as individually responsible for the prosperity of the church 
and the cause of Christ as connected with it. We promise to religiously 
instruct and govern those under our care, to reverence the Sabbath as a 
day consecrate to religious duties, to refrain from unnecessary intercourse 
with the vicious, from sinful pleasures and amusements, from speaking 
evil of others ; and to live a life of self-denial and benevolence, const- 
crating our influence, time and property to promote purity, temperance, 
equality, peace, and righteousness among men ; and thus to extend the 
kingdom of Christ till it shall become universal. 

When members are received subsequently to the primal organization 
of the church, the ministering angel of the church may change the form 
of the pronoun we to the appellative form you, and then a response from 
the church will be fitting, thus : 

We then, the members of this church, in view of these your professions 
and engagements, do ; oyfully and affectionately receive you to this com- 
munion, and welcome you to this fellowship with us in the blessings of 



XX11 ADDENDA. 

the gospel, and in the service of our Divine Redeemer. We covenant to 
love and watch over you, and in Christian fidelity to seek your advance- 
ment in the life and likeness of him whose name we bear. And now, 
beloved of the Lord, let it be impressed upon your minds, that you have 
entered into solemn engagements, from which you can never escape. 
Wherever you go these vows will be upon you. They will follow you to 
the bar of God, and abide upon you to eternity. May you walk worthy 
of God and of your profession ! May the Lord guide and preserve you 
till death, and at the last receive you and us to that blessed rest, where 
our love and joy shall be forever perfect ! And unto Him who is able to 
keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of 
his glory with exceeding joy ; to the only wise God our Saviour be glory 
and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen. 

Have not such a church, and those who adopt with them such a cove- 
nant, given ample assurance before God and man, that they are both 
sound in the faith, and acceptable before God in heart and life ? 

But if asked for a creed, that a local church might adopt and still hold 
the church door open to the greatest portion of Christians in any com- 
munity, we would commend the following, being the basis of fellowship 
for the Reformed Churches of Italy, as reported by Gavazzi, and we will 
also present a formula of our own. 

CHURCH TJ]SIOX. 

Gavazzi speaks of the efforts to unite the newly formed Protestant 
Churches of Italy, which effort resulted in leaving out of their devised 
creed all mention of those dogmatic and ritualistic features which are 
ever an apple of discord, and have hitherto defied all attempts at union 
where they are incorporated. We allude to sacraments, and the doctrine 
of absolute divine decrees of reprobation. 

Hear what he says respecting the conflict : 

" You cannot imagine how long we had to fight in order to get out of 
the influence of sectarianism. That was the work of ten years. For 
when the various denominations would come to Italy, each saying, ' We 
are the true Church/ the Italians preferred to remain in Rome rather 
than go into a church they knew nothing about. So we had to get free 
from this as best we could. We have tried to fight extremes with the 
word of God, avoiding scholastic theology. We also had a fight against 
a foreign theology that our hearts revolted at, a theology that teaches 
eternal decrees of damnation. We had to come simply to justification by 
faith to be shown by a holy life. We have now a Scriptural Church in 
Italy, and I stand before you to-day to recommend it to your minds and 
your hearts and your pulpits." 

And here is the condensed, and, as sacramentarians would say, evis- 
cerated statement of principles. A statement whose phraseology we would 
not, perhaps, pronounce, in every respect, the most felicitous, but to us it 
is amazing that those specified omissions have not been thought of in 
"free" America's attempts at Church Union. Yet all can see that in a 
country cursed to the death with Papal sacraments, the only way to 
deliver evangelical Christians from the incubus was to count the sacra- 
ments a dead letter, and leave each redeemed soul to his own Christian 
freedom respecting these principles- 



ADDENDA, XX1U 



FREE CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF ITALY. 

Declaration of principles. Adopted unanimously in General Assembly at 
Milan, June, 1870. 

" 1. God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, has manifested his will 
in Eevelation, which is the Bible, the alone perfect and immutable rule 
of faith and conduct. 

" 2. God created man perfect in his own image and likeness, but Adam 
disobeying the word of God, sinned, and thus by one man sin has entered 
into the world, and death by sin. On this account, human nature in 
Adam and by Adam has become corrupt and sinful ; and we are all born 
in Adam with the inclination to do evil, and the inability of doing well 
what God has commanded ; wherefore, naturally, we are all sinners under 
condemnation. 

"3. God does not desire the death of the sinner, but that he should 
come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved. 

"4. Salvation comes from the eternal and gratuitous love of the 
Father ; — it is obtained through the expiatory sacrifice, resurrection, 
and intercession of the Son ; — it is communicated by the Holy Spirit, 
who regenerates the sinner, unites him to Christ by faith, comes and 
dwells in him, produces peace in his heart, giving him the assurance of 
the entire remission of his sins, making him free, guiding and consoling 
him by means of the word which he himself has given, sealing and 
guarding him until the day of the glorious appearing of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ. 

" 5. The Christian, redeemed with a great price, ought to glorify God 
in his soul, body, and spirit, which belong to God, walking in holiness, 
without which no man can see the Lord. In order to this, he finds 
strength in communion with him who says to him, ' My grace is sufficient 
for thee.' 

" 6. Believers, regenerated in Christ, form the Church, which cannot 
perish nor apostatize, being the body of the Lord Jesus. 

" 7. In addition to the universal priesthood of believers, God himself 
has established in the Church various special ministries, for the perfect- 
ing of the saints and the edifying of the body of Christ, which ministries 
ought to be recognized by the Church itself. 

" 8. The Lord Jesus Christ will come from heaven and transform our 
body of humiliation into a glorious body. In that day the dead in Christ 
shall rise first, and the living who are found faithful shall be transformed, 
and thus together shall we be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord 
in the air, to be forever with the Lord ; and, after his kingdom, all the 
rest shall rise to be judged in judgment. 

" These articles are held to suffice as a testimony of a Christianity 
purely evangelical, without pretending that there are no other doctrines 
in the Bible to be believed. It is also clearly asserted that this ' Decla- 
ration of Principles ' does not pretend to infallibility. The word of God 
is alone infallible and immutable. Nor is it looked upon as the cause or 
title to salvation, but simply as the outward bond of unity in the faith 
and the banner of the Church." 

The government these churches have adopted unites the Congregational 



XXIV ADDENDA. 

and Presbyterian in one, but who would presume to say that this organiza- 
tion will certainly enclose all the Protestants of Italy, or that future 
changes in the Statements of Principles and Kules of the body will never 
occur ? And who will assume that Scripture will be violated, or benevo- 
lence lost sight of, if they do occur ? 

But among the numerous sects of America the questions of baptism, 
church order, liturgies and sacraments are the great dividing and hinder- 
ing causes, and no church or individual advocate of Christian union 
seems to dare to propose a creed or formula that will hold these at bay, 
and in proper subordination to soul-freedom in each individual Christian. 
To friends of organic union in America, we would therefore suggest or 
propose the following unassuming formula : 

UNION ARTICLES OF FAITH. 

1. The Bible is the book of God, and is the Christian's standard of 
faith. 

2. God is one : the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct offices or 
revelations of the one Divine Essence. 

3. Jesus Christ, by his sufferings and death, has made an atonement 
for man, and is now the Mediator between God and man. 

4. Moral or spiritual regeneration, i. e., the conversion of sinners from 
a sinful to a holy life, is a sufficient and only proper evidence of Chris- 
tian character. 

5. The moral law, requiring disinterested love to God and man, is 
universally obligatory : while all forms, rites, or ceremonials are con- 
tingent, deriving their obligation from the circumstances which create 
their necessity. 

6. The sanctifi cation and perpetuity of the Christian Sabbath together 
with the union of believers in the visible Church are necessary means 
of grace in all ages ; and all Christians within convenient localities 
should unite their influence for mutual good, and the more successful 
promotion of the cause of Christ. 

7. The door of the Church on earth is to be as wide as the door of the 
kingdom of heaven ; and liberty of opinion and free discussion is ever 
to be allowed concerning church government, ordinances, and modes of 
worship ; uniformity in these is not to be required, nor expected, except 
by mutual concession, to such a degree as will secure the harmony and 
efficient action of the organization. 

8. There is no New Testament ceremonial law, or law requiring the 
observance of ordinances ; the moral law requiring supreme love to God 
and equal love to man, when obeyed in all moral rectitude, wisdom, and 
zeal, by each individual Christian, constitutes the sum of all that is 
"ordained " or required either in man's individual or social capacity. 

9. The abettors of iniquity, fraud, covetousness, war, sectarianism, in- 
temperance, licentiousness, or any other form of moral obliquity are to 
have no place in the Christian Church, nor are they to receive any fellow- 
ship or countenance from Christians ; moral rectitude, as required by 
the moral law rather than oneness of sentiment in respect to forms and 
theories, is the true ground of fellowship and union. 

10. There will be a final and eternal separation between the righteous 
and the wicked : all the followers of Christ are to be exalted with Christ 



ADDENDA. XXV 

in glory, and to be advancing from glory to glory. Hence, it is their 
constant 'privilege to walk in faith and love while on earth; to be sepa- 
rate in spirit and moral conduct from the unrighteous, and to labor with 
zeal and perseverance for the advancement of Christ's kingdom and the 
salvation of man. 

Or the following, being briefer, is our preferred 

FORMULA OF FAITH. 

Recognizing each Christian's right to make "confession of faith," 
here is ours : We offer it simply as a statement, in succinct form, of those 
truths which come nearest to being essential truths ; such truths at least 
as must receive recognition by every professing and visible Church of 
Christians. While the Christian spirit, life, and love is the only criterion 
of character, and the only basis and bond of fellowship, the prime 
points of our faith are : We believe in 

1. One only living and true God. 

2. Christ, the divine Mediator and all-atoning Sacrifice. 

3. The Holy Spirit (through the truth), our Sanctifier. 

4. Moral regeneration necessary for all men. 

(a) A holy life its proof. 

(b) The visible Church, the sphere where all such should labor and 
enjoy Christian fellowship. 

(c) All contiguous, local churches should be in fellowship. 

(d) All regenerated persons should receive and bid each other god- 
speed in every good work. 

5. The Holy Scriptures are given by inspiration of God. 

6. The Christian Sabbath and the organized Church are necessary to 
the moral regeneration of man. 

7. The results or sequences of a worthy or unworthy life on earth are 
interminable. 

8. Love toward God and man, with its resultant good fruits, is the 
essence of religion and the only essential proof of a regenerate state. 

9. Obedience to the moral law only, and not to any rites or ordinances 
of a ceremonial law, may be required of any believer as a test of fellow- 
ship or union with the visible Church. 

10. For organic church action there must be an intelligible basis of 
agreement, which is most properly the Church Covenant, and no one 
that loves Christ, and desires to be a worker with the body organized to 
promote Christ's cause, should be rejected. 

11. Differing views respecting organizations, modes of worship, ordi- 
nances, or any circumstantial of external religion, and variance of 
speculative opinions, should be tolerated in every church, so far as 
consistent with personal cooperation. 

12. No true Christian is a heretic — no palpable violator of God's 
law is truly orthodox. 

13. Supreme love to God and man, with the fruits of peace, virtue, 
and righteousness, is everywhere, world without end, the fulfilling of 
the law. 

We confess that we have no right to impose even such a creed as the 
above on any body of Christian believers, or to ask any one of Christ's 



XXVI ADDENDA. 

flock to assent to such a creed, either in the aggregate or in the detail, 
as a condition antecedent to receiving him to Christian and church 
fellowship ; but as those who are not substantially agreed cannot walk 
and work together in promoting any work of faith and Christian love, 
and as there is no command or law requiring all Christians invariably 
to cooperate in each and every department of Christian labor, there 
can be no harm in a body of Christian believers choosing both their 
sphere of labor and their statement of faith, provided they do not " set 
at naught " any that do not choose to work in their sphere, or adopt the 
same formula of faith. 

But let every confession of faith, however variant from the above, 
nevertheless so diverge that, like the two sides of a right angle infinitely 
extended, it will more and more embrace the ever-enlarged and varying 
results of sanctified human thought. Creeds have, conversely, usually 
been convergent, with the sharp angle pointing toward some of Christ's 
redeemed flock, who are either pierced or riven asunder, as the point of 
the angle moved toward them. Some must be found on the one or the 
other side of the sharp point of the angle. Now no Christian or Chris- 
tian Church organization has a right to trample on the social rights, i. e., 
the rights and privileges of Christian fellowship, by leaving outside the 
fold the least lamb in all Christ's flock. If any such lamb be rendered 
excommunicate or ineligible to any fold, then, Christian brother, that is 
tha one for whose sake we should leave the ninety and nine, and go and 
make alliance with that one in the closest bonds of Christian fellowship, 
and that because he has been " set at naught " of others ! Bind your 
hearty and soul to his ! Let your sympathies and affections be twined 
with his, since it is for his honest and unflinching allegiance to his own 
conscience and to Christ that he is set at naught by the popular, the cur- 
rent, the overspreading church folds. Do this at the cost of the frown, 
if it must be, of all that have rejected Christ in the person of one of his 
" little ones." This is, without doubt, Christ's mind respecting the use 
of creeds. 

A formula for publicly consecrating children without baptism has 
been adopted by a portion of the Keformed Episcopalians of New York, 
which has also received the approval of the " Baptist Union," a journal 
advocating the union of all Baptist Churches in one fold, all showing 
that there is not only inquiry but progress in the direction of asserting 
Christian freedom from the hitherto excessive bondage to ordinances in 
the Protestant Church. 



THE END. 



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